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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A GUIDE 

TO 



TECHNICAL WRITING 



-BY- 

T. A. RICKARD 

Associate of the Royal School of Mines 

Formerly Editor of the Mining and Scientific Press 

Editor of The Mining Magazine 



SECOND EDITION 

(First Printing) 



Published by the 

Mining and Scientific Press, San Francisco, 

and 

The Mining Magazine, London. 

1910. 






Copyright, 1910 

BY 

Dewey Publishing Company 



©CU :^7o859 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

This little book is intended to help those who wish to 
write clearly on technical subjects. My experience in 
professional writing is not long enough to have entailed 
loss of sympathy with beginners, yet it is sufficient to have 
taught me the value of a guide in these matters. Rules are 
useful, but the understanding of the reason on which a 
rule is based is better. No man can apply a rule intelli- 
gently until he understands when to disregard it. Such 
hints as I have put together are those suggested by daily 
practice as an editor; they claim no finality; all of them 
may not prove acceptable; but if they provoke greater 
attention to the fundamentals of good technical writing, 
this essay will have accomplished a useful purpose. 

T. A. RiCKARD. 

San Francisco, May 1, 1908. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

The exhaustion of the first edition of this little book 
and the kindly reception accorded to it, have prompted 
the publication of a second edition. In the appendix will 
be found some additional matter, namely, a paper read 
before the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy. This 
refers mainly to British usage and contains a few minor 
repetitions of remarks appearing in the earlier pages of 
the book. But repetition is not objectionable in an effort 



to lay stress on errors of practice ; therefore I have let 
it stand. 

As might be expected, the advice that I have volun- 
teered has laid me open to the charge of assuming a posi- 
tion of authority for which I have no official sanction. 
Most of my readers will waive an apology. Reformers 
do not wait until they receive official appointment. My 
purpose is evident. As an editor who was once a mining 
engineer I am in sympathy with the profession to which 
I formerly belonged and I am keenly aware of the neces- 
sity for care in technical writing, the importance of it, 
and the possibility of betterment. Fortunately, the cause 
does not fail with the fallibility of the advocate ; in this 
little book, and in the sundry other books for which I 
am responsible, the observant critic Avill find many errors, 
such errors as hinder most of us when we try to write 
intelligently and intelligibly on technical subjects. But 
I have been learning and am learning still, by the appli- 
cation of the ideas and methods that I now oifer to others 
equally willing to learn. The worst of all waste is the 
waste of experience. Such as I have, I give. I write 
as a scribe, without authority, except in so far as the 
members of my old profession will concede it to me from 
the nature of my present occupation ; I speak as a student, 
not a master; as an amateur who has become a profes- 
sional, but not a professor. 

T. A. RiCKARD. 

London, August 1, 1910. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Preface. 

Page. 

Introductory 7 

Spurious Coin - - - - 16 

Abbreviations 20 

Numbers 25 

The Matter of Education 29 

Hyphens 33 

Some Words and Their Ways - - 40 

Unconsidered Trifles 52 

Concerning Titles 61 

Matters of Usage - - 65 

Relative Pronouns 73 

Examples of Journalese 85 

Hints in Grammar 92 

Minor Matters 96 

Specifications 101 

Things to Avoid 105 

Good and Bad Writing - - 107 

Parting Advice 110 

A Plea for Greater Simplicity in the Language of Science - 111 

Standardization of English in Technical Literature - - 127 

Index 169 



INTRODUCTORY 

It has been said that in this age the man of science 
appears to be the only one who has anything to say, and 
he is the one that least knows how to say it. This applies 
with particular force to the technical expert, whose sci- 
ence is utilitarian and who, therefore, even more than 
the philosopher, is inclined to disregard the help of cor- 
rect literary expression. In fact, the suggestion of atten- 
tion to such minor matters is apt to be considered merely 
the irritating emphasis on a non-essential. The editor 
of a Denver mining paper felt assured of support when 
he expressed the opinion that attention to the niceties 
of literary form was a mere "frill"; all that was 
needed was '*to get there," that is, to say what you 
mean in your own way. This view of the matter receives 
endorsement, in deed rather than in theory, from many 
writers on technical subjects. Moreover, the men of the 
mining and metallurgical professions are usually too busy 
to write leisurely, and in their hurry they are apt to be 
heedless of the qualities that enable language to fulfill 
its purpose. 

Herein lies the root of the matter. Language is a 
vehicle of expression designed to convey ideas from one 
man to another. It was not intended for the soliloquy; 
civilized man does not live by himself, nor does he talk 
to himself. The spoken word is heard by those present ; 
the written word reaches those at a distance ; the printed 
word is intended to be read by thousands. Careful com- 
position facilitates the conveyance of ideas, the primary 
purpose of writing being to transfer ideas from one man to 



A GUIDE TO 



another in such a manner as to give the ]east trouble to the 
recipient. At best human speech is a clumsy vehicle of 
thought; much of the idea is lost in transit; too much 
energy is consumed in the effort to arrive at the mental 
destination. Obviously we should endeavor to make the 
transfer as complete and as direct as possible. Conscien- 
tious writers try to improve their mode of expression by 
precision of terms, by careful choice of words, and by 
the arrangement of them so that they become efficient 
carriers of thought from one mind to another. Careless 
scribblers do not trouble themselves either to be precise 
in their terms or nice in the selection of words; they 
deem themselves hindered in the freedom of their speech 
by the rules of grammar ; they regard form as a fad. As 
the Denver critic said, they ''want to get there." But 
that is exactly what they fail to do, for "getting there" 
means the successful conveyance of ideas from their 
minds to those of their readers, and this they are unable 
to do because their terms do not describe the things they 
refer to, their arrangement of words is turbid, their 
sentences are involved, in fine, their vehicle of thought 
does not perform its proper function. It is as if a man 
wanting to transport a load of potatoes from his farm to 
the nearest town, were to put them, not in sacks, but 
loosely, into a wagon that needs repair, and then took 
any road that offered, driving without regard to ruts or 
stones, but rapidly and carelessly— just to get there— 
without wasting thought as to the manner of the perform- 
ance or attempting to put on any style— just get there- 
at any time, in any way— while the potatoes get shaken 
and bruised, some fall out of the wagon, and the few that 
survive are hardly worth cooking. Another farmer with 



TECHNICAL WRITING 9 

a little more sense, puts his potatoes in sacks; he lays the 
sacks so that they rest securely in his wagon, the wheels 
of which are well oiled and all the gear in excellent run- 
ning order. He takes the most direct way, avoids obsta- 
cles, drives with a light but firm rein, keeping his eye on 
the road, and without loss of time delivers his potatoes 
in first-class condition to the nearest market. You can 
vary the parable and you can add to it many details 
illustrating different phases of this subject. 

Among professional men the idea seems to prevail that 
a technical paper at its best is bound to be dry and that it 
is of no particular consequence how it is written as long 
as it is free from errors of fact and inference. To many 
of them the evidence of finish in the diction or of charm 
in the treatment savors of a sort of literary effeminacy, 
the introduction of an element foreign to the subject and 
calculated to weaken the force of a statement. Of course, 
it is possible to spend so much energy on the manner of 
writing as to dilute the matter almost to extinction, as a 
man can be so careful about the choice of his wagon and 
the selection of his road that he fails to reach the market 
with his load of potatoes until after dark. But technical 
writers rarely err in this way; on the one hand the 
subjects they choose do not lend themselves to rhapso- 
dies, and, on the other, the careful use of the pen tends to 
crystallize thought, producing simplicity, so that the 
clearness of the writing is due not to the poverty in ideas 
but to the precipitation of them. 

It being granted that writing is an instrument for 
transmitting ideas, we can appeal to the engineer on 
the score of efficiencj^ — the fetish before which he 
bows continually. It might "be expected that he would 



10 A GUIDE TO 

try to make his writing as efficient as possible. All 
his training is toward precision, and in his daily 
work he recognizes the need of the right thing in the 
right place; nevertheless, in his writing he is prone to 
employ terms of precision with all the carelessness of a 
boy in the new possession of an air-gun. Although he 
writes continually, whether it be reports, specifications, 
or letters, he is apt to consider a precise mode of expres- 
sion as too academic for practical purposes. One conse- 
quence of this indifference is that those Avho know him 
only by his written records are apt to undervalue his 
ability. 

Science is organized common sense. Is it sensible to 
take great pains in developing ideas and then to be care- 
less in the transfer of them? If not, then the scientific 
man is unscientific in his writing. Not that I would rate 
the manner above the matter; for we all know people 
with a fatal facility for expression ; they have nothing in 
particular to say, so they write for the daily press. But 
in technical and scientific literature, whether of period- 
icals or of books, the complexity of the subject is per- 
mitted to kill the charm of the writing and it would seem 
as if the worth of the matter were considered so evident 
as to make the manner of presenting it a superfluity. This 
is done despite a general appreciation of the value of 
art in writing. Two examples may be quoted from among 
great writers. In Ruskin the wording is so exquisite that 
the science is secondary. Take the fourth volume of 
'Modern Painters' and read his description of the mica 
schist on the top of the Matterhorn ; it has the charm of 
poetry, and the cadence of music, even if it be not ortho- 
dox geology. Then turn to Huxley and read his essay 



TECHNICAL WRITING .11 

on a bit of coal; there the description is clear and the 
exposition luminous, science and art are wedded in an 
essay the form of which is as perfect as the work of an 
artist ; the thought, as profound as the utterance of a sage. 
That is indeed scientific literature. 

While engineers and geologists have had to burden 
their library shelves with a lot of half-baked material, 
and while they often suffer from mental dyspepsia by 
reason of the chunks of knowledge, without dressing or 
garniture, placed before them, they have reason also to 
be grateful for some dishes of technical information, well- 
cooked, served with sauce piquante, and adorned with the 
parsley of pleasant fancy. To Rossiter W. Raymond, 
Henry M. Howe, and Edward D. Peters, for example, we 
are indebted for luminous literature sufficient to dem- 
onstrate that technology is not necessarily a desert of 
dry things. In geology the scope is wide, for the fairy 
wand of the constructive imagination is waved over the 
musty page and awakens the imagery of art, irradiating 
the library of the scientific man like those parterres of 
brightly tinted flowers that spring into sudden life after 
the rain has fallen on the West Australian desert. Among 
the living authors on geology to whom we owe a mem- 
orable amount of delectable reading are John W. Judd 
and Archibald Geikie in England, while in America there 
are a number skilled in this regard, notably S. F. Em- 
mons and F. L. Ransome. If the geologists are ahead 
of the mining engineers and metallurgists in felicity of 
expression, it is largely due to the fact that most of them 
have undergone an academic training before taking a 
special course in science ; consequently, they have ac- 



12 A GUIDE TO 

quired some feeling for the proper use of language and 
a command of words that practice has cultivated. 

It is not for me to say much about style, for even the 
definition of this term involves elaborate analysis. The 
technical writer may well begin by trjdng to learn 
the use of "proper words in proper places," that is, 
effective expression obtained by precision, in order that 
the writer may economize the mental labor of the reader. 
After a w^hile he may acquire such skill that his words 
convey more than their dictionary meaning and on rare 
occasions he may even weave a beautiful fabric illus- 
trating the complete harmony of thought and expression. 
But the first principle of style is to say a thing so that it 
is understood. Then out of the several ways in which 
an idea can be stated, choose the particular way that will 
make it bite into the understanding of the reader for whom 
it is intended. If you describe a stamp-mill to an experi- 
enced mill-man, a mining student, or a bishop, you will 
vary the manner of telling. The most effective will be 
that which has a sympathetic appreciation of the other 
fellow's receptiveness. Do not plant carnations in a clay 
soil, or rice in a sand-heap. As a rule the process is simpli- 
fied by the fact that technical writings are intended to be 
read by technical students, and, there being an accord be- 
tween the writer and his readers, he can adopt a uniform 
manner, namely, that which is natural to the professional 
man when dealing with professional matters. Therefore 
the ''great art" of Pater, the ''inevitable phrase" of Ra- 
leigh, or the "personal style" of Symonds are alike in bad 
taste, because they are out of place. They are not fitting. 
On the contrary, the ideal is Spencer's "economy" of 



TECHNICAL WRITING 13 

time and words by saying what there is to say so that it 
cannot be misunderstood. 

Technical writers should take two precepts as their 
guide: First the "proper words in proper places" of 
Swift; and then, "the style is the man" of Buff on; that 
is, precision and sincerity. Affectation is the worst of 
faults. It is a compliment to a writer to be told that 
he writes as he talks, always supposing that he does not 
talk wildly or carelessly. We like those who are natural 
and that is why the most effective writing is natural. 
There are those who, when they prepare matter that is 
to be printed, affect a vocabulary and an idiom foreign 
to them, just as some queer persons have society manners 
as distinguished from their behavior at home. There are 
public occasions, of course, when a certain dignity of 
bearing is befitting; for similar reasons it is proper that 
the irresponsibility and ease of ordinary talk should be 
modified when making statements for print. On the 
whole, if mining engineers, metallurgists, and geologists 
were to write their articles as letters to an honored pro- 
fessional friend, the result would be satisfactory. 

Bad writing is due to two fundamental errors : on the 
one hand, entire disregard for the manner of expression, 
as though it were of no consequence ; and on the other, 
subordination of the matter to the manner. The first 
was illustrated by the Denver editor* already quoted; 
the second is typified by the stylists, who wrote with a 
skill far beyond anything worth the saying that they had 
to say. 

*He has laid down the pen and is now less like a bull in a 
china-shop; whether he wields the sword or the hoe does not 
greatly matter. 



14 A GUIDE TO 

Write simply and clearly, be accurate and careful; 
above all, put yourself in the other fellow's place. Re- 
member the reader. Fluency of diction, largeness of 
vocabulary, ease of execution, and the distinction of a 
particular manner, if they come, will come with practice. 

Young engineers — and even some of the older ones — 
have been known to express the desire to be able to write 
like Dr. Raymond, for example, evidently thinking that 
it is a sort of heaven-sent faculty or else something of a 
trick, the clue to which they might discover. I venture 
, to say that in writing, as in many other things, it is prac- 
tice that makes perfect. You will find that the men 
whom you regard as skillful with the pen are those who 
have written a great deal, even if they have not published 
all of it. Raymond writes with a pen or pencil, usually 
the former, because the rigidity of the pencil is more 
fatiguing to the hand than the elasticity of a pen. What 
he writes is subsequently typewritten, of course, but by 
writing himself in long hand he is able to look over the 
first draft as a whole, and make such corrections as 
will avoid the necessity for a second typewritten version. 
At the same time it must be added that he dictates busi- 
ness letters and he can dictate a long article or even 
legal testimony, punctuation included. Skill in any 
department of human activity is apt to be the result of 
taking pains, and writing is no exception. 

Constant dependence upon a stenographer tends to 
repetition and lack of lucidity. It is no wonder that 
the technical men who are dependent upon a stenogra- 
pher do not acquire a satisfactory manner of writting ; for 
many of them only put their pen to paper in order to 
make a signature. When dictating, a man does not have 



TECHNICAL WRITING 15 

the opportunity to see what he has just said, to note how 
it hangs together, to cull and to correct as he proceeds 
until the entire statement expresses his exact meaning. 
It is certain that dictation makes for diffuseness and 
repetition. Herbert Spencer's experience was that after 
he employed an amanuensis his writing became prolix. 
In his later volumes he could cut out a quarter or more, 
whereas in the earlier books the texture was so close as 
to render condensation unnecessary. On the other hand, 
the use of a typewriting machine by an author is open 
to less objection and obviates some of the dangers of 
dictation, although it does not afford quite the same 
facility for correction as the pen or pencil. As a matter 
of practical suggestion, I venture to urge those who care 
to write well that they should re-write at least once, 
if not more often.' Froude, in one of his essays, reminds 
his friends that everything he published was written and 
re-written at least five times ! Before the stenographer and 
the copying press came into use, our fathers used to pre- 
pare a first draft, then carefully correct and amend it, and 
preserve it as their own record, sending a clean copy to 
their correspondent. Even twenty years ago mining engi- 
neers and geologists wrote their reports and descriptions 
in long hand, correcting as they proceeded and re-arrang- 
ing their statements with great care, in contrast to the 
slap-dash ways of a fluent dictation that obviates all 
manual labor save the signature. 



SPURIOUS COIN 

The language of mining and metallurgy suffers from 
the introduction of terms that are provincial, colloquial, 
or plainly vulgar. The language of the stope has its use 
— in the stope ; the phrases of the mill-foreman are not 
without their significance — in the mill ; linguistic evolution 
advances in part, at least, by the adoption of words of 
lowly birth or even of those of illegitimate origin, but, if 
the exception be granted, there remains scant excuse for 
the employment of terms that come from the uneducated, 
seeing that we have the choice of synonyms that are the 
gift of scholars. When a college graduate prefers the 
colloquialisms of a working miner to the terminology cur- 
rent among scientific men, he is recreant to his training. 
To some among us the crudities of speech heard in mine 
and mill savor of the practical, and the exactness of the 
lecture room is suggestive of the theorist who does not 
soil his hands with labor or his clothes with grease. 
This is a pathetic fallacy. Yet it has its counterpart in 
journalism. Just as the mining engineer allows his speech 
to be modified by the talk of the laborers he employs, so 
the journalist is apt to allow his writing to be edited as 
to spelling, punctuation, and other supposedly minor 
matters, by the compositor who puts his writing into type. 
Until lately — and in places even now — the editing has 
been done chiefly by the compositors, not the editors, the 
latter performing all the sundry duties of their office 
except the one from which they derive their name. Once 
in a while a real editor, like Raymond, gives powers of 
rare quality to the improvement of technical writing, but 



TECHNICAL WRITING 17 

necessarily the benefit of his service is felt immediately 
only by those he is called upon to discipline, namely, the 
contributors to the transactions of the engineering society 
of which he has been secretary-editor so long and so suc- 
cessfully. For the rest, it is chaos. 

The result is seen in the mongrel words that have In- 
vaded the language used by English-speaking engineers, 
geologists, and metallurgists. Take, for example, such 
words as reef, paddock, ledge, sulphurets, gallows frame, 
leaser, and so forth. Each of these ought to be taboo. 
Reef is Australian, it has been adopted in South Africa, 
and is now used by Englishmen everywhere. It is riot 
needed, it means nothing that 'lode' or 'vein' does not 
signify, and if it conveys more it is misleading. The 
sailors and shepherds who started gold mining in Aus- 
tralia thought they saw a resemblance between the out- 
crops of quartz veins and the coral reefs or other ridges 
of rock that make navigation dangerous. Much the same 
notion is involved in the Californian use of ledge, although 
we have learnt long ago that veins of ore do not neces- 
sarily jut out at surface or protrude above the desert 
like the comb of a game cock. 

Neither ledge nor reef is wanted; they ought to be 
kicked down the back-stairs of language by which they 
made a surreptitious entrance. Paddock is another Aus- 
tralian bastard; it means an enclosure for exercising 
horses, and the Australians, being keen horsemen, took to 
using the word in mining. Thus when ore is, or ought to 
be, 'in the bins', or 'stored', or 'stacked at surface', it is 
said to be 'in the paddock'. Sulphurets belongs to the Pa- 
cific Coast and is still employed by persons who ought to 
know better. It signifies the concentrated pyrite, such as 



18 A GUIDE TO 

is separated on a vanner. Originally it referred to the 
sooty oxy-sulphides found at the bottom of the zone of 
oxidation. In this sense it was used by some scientific men, 
but it has lost all such special meaning and is now only 
a provincialism of the least desirable kind. 

Gallows frame is usually pronounced, and sometimes 
written, gallas frame, as if to obscure its unpleasant sug- 
gestiveness. Certainly it gives no hint of the lofty engi- 
neering structure that stands over the deep shaft of a 
metal mine. To speak of a towering network of latticed 
steel as a gallows frame is plainly absurd, yet that is done 
at Butte and Cripple Creek.* Nor is it necessary; we 
have head-frame, even if we do not want the British pop- 
pet heads. Leaser is another Western colloquialism ; it is 
employed in place of lessee, but as a matter of fact it is a 
variation from lessor. Thus we see how language is turned 
inside out, for leaser is employed to designate the man 
taking a lease from the owner of a mine, while as a matter 
of fact leaser means (see any dictionary) the man that 
grants the lease. 

One more bungling term may be instanced, namely, 
rock, which is used among the copper mines of Lake Supe- 
rior to designate ore. Not only do the Finns, the Hunga- 
rians, the Swedes, and the other folk ignorant of the Eng- 
lish language, employ this term, but the graduates from 
Columbia, Harvard, and Yale accept the sloppy usage. 
Ore and rock all over the world — except in Michigan — 
are set in opposition as signifying, respectively, the profit- 
able and the unprofitable product of a mine. 

These localisms may seem harmless enough, but they 

♦Incidentally it may be mentioned that derrick is derived from 
Derrick, the hangman. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 19 

are not; they restrict the usefulness of technical litera- 
ture. The American does not know the meaning of pad- 
dock or reef, or reads into them a significance that they 
do not possess; the miner or engineer in Australia and 
South Africa misinterprets gallows frame, ledge, and sul- 
phurets. The educated man anywhere is misled by the 
employment of leaser and rock. Scores of similar exam- 
ples are available, but they need not be recited; they are 
wearisome in themselves and in the iteration of them. 
There is a broader reason for objecting to all such pro- 
vincialisms and insularities. The English language is the 
common heritage of the people of not one mining dis- 
trict, nor one region, nor one country, nor one continent; 
it is the heritage of the race to which Britishers, Amer- 
icans, Canadians, Australians, and Afrikanders all belong, 
and also of the various races that they have assimilated 
in the course of their effort to conquer nature the world 
over. The mere fact that a word is distinctively Western 
Australian or Californian, is peculiar to Michigan or New 
Zealand, is reason enough for rejecting it. Let us have 
a mintage that will pass current at full value throughout 
the English-speaking world; let it be the refined gold of 
human speech. 



ABBREVIATIONS 

Since an abbreviation lacks dignity, it should not be 
used at the close of a paragraph and it ought to be 
avoided even at the end of a sentence. A paragraph 
embodying a reasoned statement should close with a word 
that is significant. In oratory, and even in lesser forms 
of speech, it is natural to end a statement with a word 
of some consequence. You do not ''hit the nail on the 
head" with a cucumber, and you cannot expect to make 
a statement incisive with a final word that is of no value 
in the expression of your idea. It is this feeling of appro- 
priateness that causes the speaker to close an oration 
with a sentence, and the sentence with a word, that is 
deeply significant. Literature is speech transferred to 
paper. Similar considerations govern the employment 
of language in either case. 

The plural is not given to an abbreviation, because it 
is not a word but a symbol. In some instances the symbol 
used as an abbreviation refers to an entirely different 
word. Thus the term pound is represented by lb., which 
stands for the Latin libra, and the plural of libra would be 
librae, not libras, therefore lis. is entirely incorrect. Oz. is 
obviously not a direct abbreviation for ounce but the 
apothecary's symbol of that measure, therefore the plural 
is as improper as it would be if given to a chemical sym- 
bol, which is usually not a part of the common name of 
the element it represents. Thus Au and Ag are not abbre- 
viations of 'gold' and 'silver' but symbols made from 
letters occurring in the Latin equivalents. 

In the metric system we have to note that cubic centi- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 21 

metre consists of two words, therefore the chemist's ab- 
breviation c.c. should be written with a period after each 
letter. Some of the chemical societies authorize the use 
of the form cc. but for this there is no excuse save lazi- 
ness; if the first period is omitted for convenience, the 
second might as well be dropped and chemists who do 
not care to bother about niceties should use cc as the sym- 
bol of their literary independence. Colloquially most of 
us speak of a kilo of silver and when we are in a country 
using the metric system we talk about kilos. The last is a 
vulgarism ; as for the singular form, that is apt in printed 
matter to be confused with kilom.etre. Kilo is an unschol- 
arly abbreviation ; it is better to use kg. for the kilogram 
and km. for the kilometre. 

In regard to the dollar as used in Spanish-American 
countries, especially Mexico, most mining engineers and 
travelers know what confusion is created by using the 
same term for two different currencies, for a Mexican 
dollar happens now, but not always, to be worth about 
one-half of the American dollar, as measured in gold. It 
will be well to use the peso and centavo, instead of the 
dollar and cent, when referring to Mexican currency. The 
centavo is abbreviated to cv. and the peso is represented 
by the letter P with two bars, like those of the dollar sign ; 
thus : ^. This is used in the Philippine Islands. 

The half-spelling of the thermometrical signs (Fahr., 
Cent., Reau.) is ugly and unnecessary, as no two of them 
begin with the same letter. The initial serves the purpose, 
with the addition of a period. 

Many writers appear to have a confused idea that HoO 
and Aq. are equal and interchangeable. The first is the 
symbol of a chemical entity ; the second is the apothe- 



22 A GUIDE TO 

cary's sign for water as a fluid; one indicates a molecule, 
the other water as a sensible mass or bulk. 

The use of the upper accents to indicate feet and inches 
is objectionable, for it is also employed to indicate min- 
utes and seconds ; in practice the use of these signs is apt 
to cause errors, for the omission of one of the accents 
converts inches into feet. Even in giving a measurement 
of time it is better to use the verbal abbreviation of 
minute and second. Thus: 25 min. 17 sec, unless pre- 
ceded by degrees, in which case confusion is unlikely and 
uniformity requires us to write 35° 25' 17". 

In giving measurements it is better to indicate the mul- 
tiplication by the word 'by' than by the sign X, because 
the first represents the wording as read and the latter, if 
carelessly written, is easily mistaken for the plus sign. 

Per cent has ceased to be an abbreviation, for we no 
longer say per centum. It does not need a period. 

Thus we arrive at the following rules : 

1. Never end a paragraph with an abbreviation. Spell 
the last word. 

2. Abbreviations are used in the singular only. Thus : 
17 lb., not 17 lbs. ; 15 oz,, not 15 ozs. ; 11 in., not 11 ins. 

3. A period is required after an abbreviation. Thus : 
The Zinc Corporation Ltd. ; the Mysore Gold Mining Co. ; 
40 ft. long ; 11 in. wide. 

4. Chemical symbols are not abbreviations, but signs. 
They do not require a period. Thus : 

2NaCl + H2SO4 = 2HC1 + Na^SO^. 

5. Weights and measures are abbreviated only when 
preceded by a number. Thus : 20 lb. ; several pounds ; 
five pounds. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 23 

6. The following abbreviations are noteworthy: 

Barrel bbi. Gallon gal. 

Bushel bu. Horse-power hp. 

Fathom fm. Yard yd. 

Miles, tons, and volts are not abbreviated. 

7. In metric measurements the recognized abbrevia- 
tions are : 

Metre m. Gram gm. 

Kilometre km. Kilogram kg. 

Centimetre cm. Milligram mg. 

Millimetre mm. Cubic centimetre e.c. 

The metric gram and the English grain must be spelled 
whenever there is a chance of confusion; otherwise use 
gm. for gram and gr. for grain. 

8. In referring to money, the dollar sign should not be 
used for Mexican currency, but that of the peso, thus, T. 
The following abbreviations are correct : 

Cent c. Shilling s. 

Centavo cv. Penny d. 

Franc fr. Florin fl. 

In the case of foreign money, it is usually best to spell 
words designating currency if there is any chance of a 
misunderstanding. 

9. In abbreviating the thermometrical and chemical 
scales, use the following : 

Centigrade C. Beaume B. 

Fahrenheit F. Reaumur R. 

10. The words figure and number are abbreviated 
when preceding a numeral. Thus: "There is a diagram 
of No. 2 shaft in Fig. 3." 



24 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

11. The word company is abbreviated when part of an 
official name. Thus: The Camp Bird Mines Co. When 
used informally it must be spelled, as : " We understand 
that th^ Camp Bird company is to build a new mill." The 
and forming part of the name of a company is written 
with the ampersand. Thus : The Butte & Boston Copper 
Mining Co. ; the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. 

12. Use abbreviations, not signs, to indicate feet and 
inches or minutes and seconds. Thus: 14 ft. 3 in., not 
14' 3". Also 34 min. 5 sec, not 34' 5", unless preceded 
by degrees ; then 10° 34' 5". 

13. Use the word 'by' instead of the sign X in giving 
dimensions. Thus 8 by 12 in., not 8 X 12 inches. Also : 12 
divided by 3, making 4 ft., not 12 -^ 3 == 4 ft., except in 
mathematical tables or treatises. 



NUMBERS 

In making rules for tae use of numbers it is necessary 
to recognize the exceptions. The styles of different 
printers exhibit an amusing diversity and the attempt to 
observe any cast-iron '•ule will lead to trouble. 

While it is usual to spell numbers less than 10, because 
they are represented by short words, it is desirable to 
use figures even for numbers less than 10 when they are 
grouped with other numbers of 10 and over. Thus : ' ' The 
length in one case was 2 ft., and in the other it was 11 
ft." This puts the two figures in better contrast than by 
saying: "The length in one case was two feet, and in the 
other it was 11 ft." Similarly, when weights or meas- 
urements are being compared. Thus: "The timbers used 
were 2 by 4 by 12 inches" or "one vat was 8 ft. deep and 
6 ft. diam., while the other was 10 ft. deep and 8 ft. diam- 
eter." The figures emphasize the idea of relation of size 
better than if the dimensions were expressed in words. 

Figures indicate some attempt to be accurate, so that 
when a mere approximation is intended it is well to avoid 
the use of them. Thus: "He lived here twenty years 
ago," if it was about twenty years ago; but if it was 
exactly 20 years, then employ the figures. 

Three shades of accuracy are expressed by ten, 10, 
and 10.0. Ten ,is approximate, 10 is accurate, 10.0 is 
exact. The last form is used only in connection with 
other decimals. For example: "One streak of ore is 8.4 
in. wide, another is 9.3 in., and a third 10.0"; meaning 
thereby that the possibility of a slight excess or deduc- 



26 A GUIDE TO 

tion from 10 has been considered, and rejected, the meas- 
urement being absolute. 

The use of unnecessary ciphers is apt to cause an error 
by misplacing the decimal point. Thus $5.00 may be 
made $500 by the dropping of the point. It is obvious 
that $5.00 offers no advantage over $5 ; it is calculated to 
mislead, for the extra ciphers make it loom larger than 
the single figure. People who offer rewards for missing 
poodles do well to state that they are prepared to pay 
$1.00 for the lost dog, for $1.00 looks like more money 
than $1, which seems little enough for a valuable puppy. 

In regard to the use of the comma, it is customary to 
employ it for the thousands, but this is not necessary and 
divides the figures unpleasantly; therefore, it is well to 
write 5000 and 2500 rather than 5,000 and 2,500, using 
the comma at the next stage. Thus: 5000, not 5,000; but 
51,250, not 51250. 

As to decimals I venture to advise technical men to em- 
ploy them whenever they mean to be exact and whenever 
they have the information permitting of such exactness, 
reserving the employment of fractions for approximate 
statements. Thus: ''The ore carries 2.25 (not 2l^) oz. 
gold and 10.75 (not 10%) oz. silver per ton," if an assay 
has proved this to be the case. It is best to say, ''The dis- 
tance is 2% miles" when all you know is that it is more 
than 2, and less than 3, miles. If the distance has been 
measured and it is known to be exactly 2.5 miles, the deci- 
mal is preferable. Do not make a pretense of accuracy by 
using decimals when they are not wanted. 

Hours or minutes less than 10 should be spelled (two 
hours) unless grouped with figures of 10 and. over (12 
hr.) or with a decimal (as 1.5 hr.). 'One and five-tenths 



TECHNICAL V/RITING 27 

hours' is preferably not spelled, because it spreads too 
much and is clumsy. 

There is another exception : I refer to dimensions such 
as eighth, sixteenth, or thirty-second, which are used in 
mechanical engineering, where tools and appliances are 
made in fractions of an inch. To say 0.125 in. or 0.03125 
in. will not convey what is meant, because the fractions 
refer to standard sizes quoted in the trade, and not actual 
measurements. A quarter-inch plate is not necessarily 
exactly 0.25 in. thick. 

The foregoing ideas are embodied in the following 
rules : 

1. Use figures for 10 and for numbers over 10. Spell 
those under 10. 

The following exceptions must be noted : 

(a) When beginning a sentence, as: "Fourteen men 
working six days completed the dam." 

(b) When there are several references to num])ers, 
so that the figures accentuate the statement of fact. 
"Nine men working 6 days with machine-drills were able 
to sink the shaft 9 ft., breaking 75 tons of ore." 

(c) When one number follows another, spell one of 
them, preferably the smaller: "He took samples at 50 
five-foot intervals." "The manager bought eleven 24-ft. 
belts." 

(d) When an approximation is intended. Thus: 
"This was a lively mining camp twenty years ago." "He 
will be a rich man ten years hence." 

2. Omit unnecessary ciphers in stating sums of money. 
Thus : $2, not $2.00 ; $5000, not $5,000.00. 

3. Use the comma for more than four figures, not oth- 
erwise. Thus : 5000 and 50,000. 



28 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

4. Use decimals in place of fractions whenever you 
mean to be exact, not otherwise. 

5. In decimal numbers having no units, a cipher 
should be placed before the decimal point. Thus: Not 
.32 lb., but 0.32 pound. 



Usage determines the meaning of words. In the end a 
word gets to mean what people in general intend it to 
mean. When you violate good use, you employ the word 
in a sense likely to be misunderstood, and then the word 
becomes either a blank or a snare. The Western Ameri- 
can who speaks of doing the work of a 'mucker' in a mine 
is unintelligible to the Australian, and the New Zealander 
who talks of putting ore in a 'paddock' is offering not 
information, but a riddle, to the Canadian. The use of 
spurious words or the colloquial jargon of the illiterate 
tends to take us back to the monkey stage, for man's chief 
distinction from the lower animals is his gift of intelli- 
gent and intelligible speech. 

Technical words are designed for a specific purpose, as 
tools are kept apart for special duties. It is a mistake to 
open a can of sardines with a chisel. Such use blunts the 
chisel and destroys its service in carpentering. The sig- 
nificance of words intended for special uses is impaired 
when they are made to do a common service, for which 
other words are available. 



THE MATTER OF EDUCATION 

Technical men, such as engineers and geologists, are 
not always graduates from a university, nor, even if they 
happen to have received a liberal education, are they 
necessarily well trained in the use of the English lan- 
guage — that is, the training founded upon lessons in the 
languages of antiquity, followed by familiarity with the 
classics of their own tongue. Undoubtedly such a prepa- 
ration is useful, but the value of it can be over-estimated. 
Not long ago a mining engineer, who occasionally con- 
tributes to technical journals, took pains to explain to me 
that he was not a college man, as if to excuse the lack 
of finish in his writing. It seems worth while to dwell on 
this point, in order to encourage those who have both 
knowledge and ability to write intelligently, without the 
aid of previous teaching either in Greek and Latin or in 
Milton and Meredith. To be taught a language systemat- 
ically is like any other form of mental training, it is a 
short-cut to efficiency, enabling the student to acquire, 
rapidly and thoroughly, such skill as would otherwise be 
attained only laboriously and imperfectly. Nevertheless, 
there are those that have taught themselves, by practice 
and association, whether of men or books, to write well 
the language of foreign lands or of their own; on the 
other hand, there are many owners of a university diploma 
that have so skillfully evaded instruction in the proper 
use of their own language, not to mention a foreign 
tongue, that they are, to all intents and purposes, illite- 
rate. The modest fellow who excused himself to me, on 
the occasion above mentioned, had learned to write in a 



30 A GUIDE TO 

straight-forward unpretentious way, which in itself con- 
stituted the stj^le best adapted to technologj^ He might 
lack the classical learning required of a man competent 
to undertake the preparation of a 'Synthetic Philosophy' 
or 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', or an 
'Essay on Criticism', but for the purpose in hand, namely, 
to describe an ore deposit or discuss a problem in metal- 
lurgy, he was adequately equipped. Rhetorical confec- 
tionery and frills of any kind are out of place in tech- 
nical writing, except on rare occasions. The sort of self- 
consciousness that leads to verbal gymnastics is in itself 
bad form, and it is affected only by the half-educated. 
There is the simplicity of diction marking the man ac- 
quainted with several languages and the master of at 
least one of them; and there is the simplicity of unpre- 
tentious speech belonging to the man who has but a 
working knowledge of his own language, and makes the 
most of the instrument at his command. Between them 
comes the writer who ought to know better, but, from 
conceit or ignorance, deems it a waste of energy to use 
his verbal weapons so that they shape his thoughts into 
carven words, whether vitalized in the speech of the mo- 
ment or sculptured in the writing that lives. 

Two examples, founded on fact, will illustrate my argu- 
ment. I had the pleasure of editing a long and detailed 
article describing the operations of a metallurgical pro- 
cess; there was no room for a literary pose, for the 
whole account was eminently practical and businesslike. 
This article was so well written as to require scarcely any 
editing, and when it was published I referred gratefully 
to the excellence of the w^riting. Happening to discuss the 
incident with a friend, who knew the writer of the article 



TECHNICAL WRITING 31 

personally — as I did not, this common friend asked me 
to guess for what occupation the writer had been trained, 
and I answered: ''The ministry." This happened to be 
exactly right, for he had been to Oxford and was intended 
for the Church before he wandered into a cyanide mill. 
All the marks were there, such as a quiet command of 
English and a masterful use of it, making a difficult bit 
of technical exposition as clear and interesting as the 
subject permitted. And since "the home of lost causes" 
is not my alma mater, I am glad to acknowledge the value 
of Oxonian English in the literature of science. More of 
it would be a great relief to the readers — not to mention 
the hard-working editors — of technical periodicals. 

My other example is less different than, at first sight, 
it may appear. I have in mind an article describing min- 
ing conditions in a Central American republic. Such 
descriptions are usually made as verbally florid as the 
vegetation of the tropics, and they are frequently as in- 
volved as the jungle itself; at the best, it is customary to 
bespatter them with unnecessary Spanish words and to 
deal in gorgeous generalities supposed to indicate the 
unlimited mineral resources of an inaccessible region. 
From all these common faults, this article was free. The 
sentences were short and to the point. The statements 
conveyed information and yet avoided exaggeration. The 
writer kept what he knew at first hand separate from 
what he had merely been told; he gave just the data the 
average intelligent reader would be likely to want, and a 
touch of humor was not lacking in a reference to the 
queer things that happen on the Spanish-American fron- 
tier. It was like the sensible talk of an intelligent trav- 
eler who had kept his eyes open and his notebook handy. 



32 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

The writer had received no special training in his own lan- 
guage, nor in that of another; as the graduate of a tech- 
nical college he had been given rather more of contempt 
than love for the use of proper words in proper places, 
and yet, by native intelligence and the desire to do his 
task well — his task being to tell what he knew of mining 
in this particular region — he had succeeded in preparing 
a contribution that was in its way as good as that of the 
Oxford man. Both men were unaffected, both kept in 
mind the purpose of the writing, and both knew what 
they were talking about. The moral of it all is that bad 
w^riting is due either to insincerity, or carelessness, or 
ignorance. 



HYPHENS 

Hyphens may be considered ungainly, but they are 
necessities in technical writing, where materials and ma- 
chinery are continually being described under conditions 
modifying each other. There is a varying degree of in- 
timacy between adjacent words. This is expressed in 
three ways: 

1. Mere juxtaposition of separate words, indicating a 
loose connection. 

2. Hyphenation, implying intimacy without entire 
loss of individuality. 

3. Compounds, expressing a singleness of meaning. 
Thus: An 'ore deposit' is a deposit of ore, and you 

can drive a cross-cut to find either the deposit or the ore. 
Moreover, a deposit is not necessarily composed of ore ; it 
may consist of mud or guano. Likewise the ore may not 
be in the form of a deposit ; it may be in a mill-bin, or in 
a furnace. In the case of an 'ore-shoot' there is a duality, 
but not a separateness, of meaning, and while the shoot 
may be mentioned by itself the idea of ore is assumed, this 
intimacy being recognized by hyphenation. Finally, in 
'orebody', we have a true compound, for the mmer does 
not drive his drift to discover some indeterminate kind 
of body, nor does he say that the body is large or rich; 
he speaks of orebody as signifying one idea, the separate 
portions of which, the body (substance) and the ore (at- 
tributive), are completely merged in the notion of a mass 
of valuable rock, constituting an orebody. Another ex- 
ample may be given, thus : 

A blackbird cage is a cage for the songster known as 
the blackbird. 



84 A GUIDE TO 

A black-bird cage is a cage for birds that are black. 

A black bird-cage is a black cage for birds. 

A black bird cage might mean a black cage for birds, 
or a cage for black birds, or a cage for blackbirds. Unless 
two of the three words are hyphenated or compounded, 
the meaning remains unknown. Further examples refer- 
ring to technical subjects will make clear the service done 
by hyphens. 

A single-stamp mill is one possessing batteries of one 
stamp apiece, like the Nissen, instead of the usual five. 

A single stamp-mill is a lonely mill, like some to be seen 
in the deserts of Nevada. 

A single-stamp-mill possesses only one stamp, after the 
Lake Superior fashion, where one big steam-stamp does 
the work of 150 ordinary gravit}^ stamps. 

A crude ore-bin is an ore-bin of crude construction ; a 
crude-ore bin is one made to contain crude ore, that is, 
ore as it comes from the mine, before concentration in the 
mill ; a crude ore bin is an example of crude writing. 

In the manufacture of nitro-glycerine the charge is 
'drowned' in a large volume of cold water; the recep- 
tacle in which this is done is termed the Mrowning-tank'. 
Should the hyphen be omitted, it might be supposed that 
the tank was drowning and sympathy would be needlessly 
excited. Similar examples are cooling-floor, roasting- 
hearth, grinding-plate, settling-vat, amalgamating-pan, 
and so forth. 

The first part of these compound words is a gerund; 
that is, it is a verbal noun identical in form with the parti- 
ciple ; the participle is an adjective, but the gerund is a 
noun that has the power to govern another noun. For 
example : A cooling floor is one that, having been hot, 



TECHNICAL WRITING 35 

is becoming cold. Here cooling is a participle serving as 
an adjective. A cooling-floor is a floor upon which hot 
ore is placed for the purpose of cooling; in other words, 
it is a floor employed for cooling ore. Here cooling is a 
gerund, doing duty as a noun. 

Hyphenation is necessary to prevent ambiguity. Thus 
a settling-vat is a vat in which particles of ore are likely 
to settle, but a settling vat is one that is subsiding, for 
example, by reason of a landslip or bad foundation. A 
zinc box is made of zinc, but a zinc-box contains zinc ; for 
example, the compartments in which zinc is placed in 
order to precipitate gold from cyanide solutions. These 
boxes are precipitating-boxes, not precipitating boxes, be- 
cause they do not precipitate the gold, they merely afford 
the facilities for the precipitation. A slag-pot receives 
slag ; it is not made of slag, as is a slag pile. 

The following quotation vividly illustrates the value of 
the hyphen: ''Iron screens in zinc boxes are detrimental 
in as much as they facilitate solution of zinc." The 
screens are made of iron and they are placed in wooden 
boxes, into which zinc shaving also is introduced; the 
boxes are not made of zinc, although the sentence says so. 
It ought to read: ''Iron screens in zinc-boxes are detri- 
mental because they facilitate the solution of zinc." 

A roasting-furnace is one in which ore is roasted. The 
furnace does not do the roasting, but the fuel that is in it. 
A roasting furnace is one that is being consumed by exces- 
sive heat, as in a conflagration. A grinding plate is one 
that grinds, but usually it is a grinding-plate, that is, a 
piece of steel or iron by the medium of which the ore is 
ground against another hard surface. It is a plate for 
grinding. Likewise an amalgamating-pan is one in which 



36 A GUIDE TO 

the process of amalgamation or combination with mer- 
cury is effected; it is not the pan that does the work; 
it only provides the receptacle in which the action takes 
place. If it were the active agent, as sometimes the iron 
is actually supposed to be in the chemistry of the process, 
then indeed it would be correct to call it an amalgamating 
pan, Avithout hyphenation. Familiar examples are carv- 
ing-knife, walking-stick, and chewing-gum. 

"Brown agitating tank." This might suggest that a 
tank that was brown in color was being agitated. Each 
word needs amendment. On reading the context, the 
reader could ascertain that it was not a tank but a vat, 
for cyanidation; it was a vat in which the solution was 
agitated; it was the invention of Brown. Therefore, the 
title should be Brown's agitating-vat (that is, vat for 
agitating) or agitator-vat. 

Between true nouns the hyphen may be needed to mark 
intimacy between words. Thus: ''The gases are taken 
into steel dust chambers where a large proportion of the 
flue dust is settled." A hyphen is needed after the first 
dust, otherwise it may be chambers containing steel-dust, 
and not dust-chambers made of steel, as is meant. Flue 
dust also requires hyphenation ; the dust does not con- 
sist of flues. 

A wet-milling plant is one in which a wet process is 
employed, while a wet milling-plant is a mill in which 
water is wasted ; it is a sloppy establishment. 

In some cases the hyphen is needed to prevent confu- 
sion or to give emphasis to the meaning of the prefix re, 
as in : 

Re-treat (to treat over again), which might be mistaken 
for retreat (to retire). 



TECHNICAL WRITING 37 

Reconstruct is equivalent to rebuild but re-construct 
goes a little further, as if to say that it is being built all 
over again. Thus : reconstruct a company, but re-con- 
struct a mill. Before a word beginning with a vowel a 
hyphen is especially desirable, as in re-ignite, re-imburse, 
re-incorporate. The prefix re is given with varying em- 
phasis, as in relegate and re-locate; in the latter the idea 
of repetition of the act of locating is strong, therefore we 
write re-locate and not 'relocate'. In co-operate and co- 
ordinate the hyphen takes the place of a dieresis. Rein- 
force is written without a hyphen, the significance of the 
re having become lost. 

It is easy to re-cover an umbrella that is in need of re- 
pair; it is most difficult to recover a lost umbrella, espe- 
cially if it be a good one. 

A man is downcast in spirit, but a shaft is down-cast 
as regards ventilation. 

Between numbers expressing a range of measure or 
quantity, it is well to avoid using a hyphen. Thus : ''The 
addition of 5-7 c.c. of preventive solution" is improved 
by writing "5 to 7 c.c," for a dash in the manuscript 
might be taken for a period; in reading we say "to," 
therefore it is well to write it. 

The fifty-first means the one coming after fifty, but the 
fifty first are the fifty that come first, or the first fifty. 

The hyphen is not needed between adjectives, as light 
blue, yellowish green, where the first plays the part of an 
adverb. In blue-black it seems unavoidable. 

Between an adverb and a participle (even in an adjec- 
tival form) the hyphen is not required, thus : well defined, 
finely developed. 

Two nouns should be hyphenated if they are brought 



38 A GUIDE TO 

together to name one thing and neither of them is used 
distinctively in the adjectival sense. Such compounds are 
elliptical condensations of a phrase, and the normal se- 
quence of the words is inverted. Thus we have freight- 
train (train for freight), foot-note (note at the foot), 
field-work (work in the field). 

Two words grouped in an attributive position seem to 
be welded together, but when they are in the predicate 
they appear to have an independent meaning. The attrib- 
utive group is hyphenated, while the predicate is not; in 
the predicate the adverb is stronger, thus : 

1. "I followed the half-obliterated footsteps." 

2, ''The footsteps were half obliterated." 

Of course, hyphenation can be carried too far, and it 
has been abused even by goqd writers for the reason 
among others, that they have developed the habit from 
familiarity with German, a language in which compound- 
ing is carried to a distressing extreme. Thus we read : 

1. "The supply of lead-ore at any particular plant." 

2. "These magnetite-deposits are associated with 
gneisses." 

3. "The nickel in an iron-ore would be of value." 

4. "Decrease in the residual sulphur-values, indicat- 
ing a greater sulphur-removal." 

5. "The use of mining-machinery during a period of 
five years." 

6. "Comparatively few bituminous coal-mines can be 
equipped." 

7. "The several makes to-day differ only in details." 

8. "Under every-day working-conditions." 

These examples are taken from a few pages of Vol. 
XXIX, of the Transactions of the American Institute of 



TECHNICAL WRITING 39 

Mining Engineers. In most instances the hyphens are not 
needed, for they do not make the meaning clearer; they 
are not regrettable necessities, but avoidable disfigure- 
ments. In several cases the use of them can be set aside 
advantagously, for "these deposits of magnetite" is pref- 
erable to "these magnetite deposits." In the fourth ex- 
ample, the hyphen is awkward. In the fifth it seems 
wholly unnecessary. In the sixth, it is not the mines 
but the coal that is bituminous, therefore it ought to be 
bituminous-coal mines. To-day does not need a hyphen ; 
it is a compound so familiar as to have attained the mean- 
ing of a single word. In the last example we have a Ger- 
manized construction that is expressive but awkward; 
there is nothing gained and something lost by the use of 
the hyphens. It is well to make technical writing as 
attractive as the subject will permit. 

Hyphenation represents an early stage of union. After 
a while, by use, the association of ideas becomes fixed, 
so that the pair of words is wedded, forming a literary 
unit. The chief reason for hyphenation of two words is 
that when so connected they have a meaning slightly dif- 
ferent from that which they convey when given sepa- 
rately. But it will not do to lean too heavily on the 
hyphen ; illustrations of distinctions can be given, as 
above, but in practice it is well to avoid all risk of confu- 
sion. In speaking there is a variation of pronunciation 
between the members of a hyphenated couple, affording 
a subtle distinction not transferable to written language. 
In writing, the desire to be lucid should be the controlling 
factor. 



SOME WORDS AND THEIR WAYS 

The description of metallurgical processes and the ex- 
planation of technical methods, whether in mine or mill, 
will be rendered clearer, and therefore more useful, by 
the selection of the right words. 

Vat and tank are used as synonyms, tank having come 
into general use in connection with cyanide work. This 
is unfortunate. A tank is a large vessel or receptacle, 
made either of wood or of metal, intended to contain a 
fluid, such as gas or water. 'Water tank' and 'gasoline 
tank' represent correct usage. The transfer of the word 
to chemistry is not warranted. For that purpose we have 
vat, that is, a vessel or tub in which ore is washed or sub- 
jected to chemical treatment. 'Cyanide vat' and 'chlori- 
nation vat' are correct. Because illiterate and non-tech- 
nical people use technical terms wrongly, engineers are 
not justified in adopting sloppy ways of speech. 

Ledge, reef, and lead afford examples of the same kind. 
Ledge and reef are localisms, originating in California 
and Australia, based on early geological misconceptions 
of the nature of a 'lode' or 'vein'. Ledge refers to the 
prominence of the outcrop and reef to the projecting edge, 
resembling the rocks that endanger navigation. There is 
no need of these terms now. In so far as they have a 
special significance, it is misleading. As to lead, it is a 
good old term, for it is allied to 'lode' and indicates the 
meaning of the latter, as something that leads the miner 
in his exploration, but the term is now applied exclusively 
to gravel deposits, as in 'deep lead', which is an alluvial 
channel blanketed by lava. Lead should not be used as a 
synonym for 'vein' or 'lode'. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 41 

Sulphuret is rarely used nowadays save on the Pacific 
Coast. It is a term that some people who ought to know 
better use in place of 'sulphide'. Sulphuret was used at 
one time to designate the earthy sulphates formed in the 
early stages of oxidation of sulphides, but this distinc- 
tion is no longer observed and the term is now a mere 
localism, without special meaning. 'Concentrate' and 
'sulphide' are preferable. 

The use of the term country-rock amounts to tautology, 
as was pointed out by Le Neve Foster many years ago. 
If we could agree to use country by itself, it would be 
well. Obviously it must be rock, although we read some- 
time ago in a Colorado paper of a drift that was "in no 
formation," meaning thereby that it was in rock of no 
definite structure. The workings of a mine cannot pene- 
trate anything but rock, unless it be a snow-drift, as hap- 
pened once in the case of some crafty contractors, who 
closely timbered 50 ft. of an adit that went through a 
snowslide before it became a bore in a granite mountain. 

Vein-stone is a similar survival from the days when 
mining literature was written for people that were not 
supposed to know anything about such matters. And 
thus we come to Australian usage, which is derived from 
untechnical sources. At Bendigo and Ballarat they talk 
of "good-looking stone," meaning 'ore'; of "a make of 
stone," meaning an 'ore-shoot'; they strike "rich gold" 
in a shaft and find "poor gold" in a cross-cut, meaning 
quartz rich or poor in gold. These terms appear even in 
Australian mine reports that are prepared by educated 
men, who simply get their terminology from illiterate 
workmen. 

Fully as bad is the usage obtaining in the Lake Supe- 



42 A GUIDE TO 

rior copper mines, where they exploit copper rock and 
obtain mineral. For the use of rock instead of 'ore' 
there is no excuse whatever; for mineral, meaning 
the native copper extracted by milling, there is some 
reason, for is it not the mineral in that region? It 
is a localism that has become rooted by repetition. But 
no self-respecting engineer ought to use rock in the Ke- 
weenaw way. 

Then there is mineralization, to vv^hich some object. It 
comes to us from the French, who will say that an ore is 
hien mineralise, just as we (v/ith an apology) may say that 
it is 'well mineralized'. Minerai is French for 'ore' and 
mineralise is employed as the corresponding adjective, 
despite its derivation from mineral. When we use 'min- 
eralized' and 'mineralization', we mean that the rock is 
full of the valuable minerals that constitute, or else accom- 
pany, ore, but as we do not hark back to minerai, our use 
of these English terms is not academic. However, in de- 
fault of better terms, mineralized and mineralization are 
acceptable. 

In Australia they call a level in a mine a drive, and this 
is the custom among Englishmen generally. In America 
they say drift, and this is correct. A miner drives his 
working ahead and the result is a drift. For example, it 
is correct to say : 

1. "Ten feet of driving was accomplished." 

2. "The north drift was advanced five feet." 

3. "The lessees drove the drift as rapidly as pos- 
sible." 

Similarly, in regard to another form of mine working, 
the result of excavating upward is a raise or rise, the 
latter preferably. It should never be upraise, as some- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 43 

times appears in reports on mines. Down-winze would be 
no worse. 

It is unfortunate that in so good a book as Le Neve 
Foster's 'Textbook of Stone and Ore Mining' he should 
have given chute as the American equivalent of * ore-shoot' 
— which it is not. The employment of chute instead 
of shoot to describe an orebody of definite shape and pitch 
is now a British error, for it is rare in America. An 
error it is. Chute is a mode of spelling 'shute', which is 
an inclined trough for conveying materials. Thus : 

"The ore broken from the new ore-shoot passes down 
the chute that leads to the mill." 

The distinction, now fairly well established, between 
these two terms is worthy of general adoption among 
English-speaking technical men. 

Tunnel is commonly employed to designate a drift or 
level penetrating a hillside; this is wrong, for a 'tunnel' 
is a gallery or bore that goes through a mountain from 
daylight to daylight, as a railroad 'tunnel' does. The 
long cross-cut or drift that enters from the surface, be- 
coming the main artery of the mine, serving both as an 
exit and to drain the workings, may best be labeled an 
adit, which is a good old technical word long known to 
miners. On the other hand, the short drifts or levels that 
are run by prospectors into the hillsides of our mining re- 
gions, and which cannot well be called by so big a name as 
adit, need not be called tunnels, seeing that 'prospoctinc;' 
drift' or 'exploratory level' or plain drift or level will 
serve for the purpose. The French have galerie and we 
sometimes use the English equivalent, but it has become 
archaic. 

When words have a prescribed duty to perform in 



44 A GUIDE TO 

technology, it is well to limit their use to a particular 
meaning. Thus locate and location are employed in min- 
ing to signify, respectively, the act of delimiting a claim 
and the claim when thus delimited. It is a common error 
to use locate instead of place, situate, reside, find, etc., as 
in the following examples : 

1. "The company located the mill on the side of Gold 
hill." 

2. "The town is located on Alder creek." 

3. "He was located at Tonopah." 

4. "The superintendent located the ore-shoot at the 
fourth level." 

5. "Where the office, quarters for men, and ore-bins 
are to be located." 

In the first it would be right to say that the millsite was 
located at a certain place, but the building itself was built, 
or erected there. The second case is common ; the town is 
situated, although the townsite might be located, on the 
creek. The third is an ugly colloquialism. It should be : 
"He resided at Tonopah," or plainly, "he lived" there. 
In the fourth, the writer means that the position of the 
ore-shoot was ascertained, or briefly, that "the superin- 
tendent found the ore-shoot." In the fifth, built will state 
the meaning. 

6. "Ore has been found on four new locations on the 
property." He does not mean what he says, for he states 
that ore has been found on four new claims (that have 
been located, but not patented). He means four new 
places or spots or points. 

7. In one of the Geological Survey reports it is writ- 
ten: "In planning the position of stopes the assay charts 
often enable the location of pillars in relatively poor ma- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 45 

terial. " This should read: "In platting the stopes the 
assay-charts often indicate the best position for pillars in 
the relatively poor lode-matter." 

The last abomination in the way of making locate do 
improper service is that which I saw lately in a news- 
paper heading ; it appears that a man had found his miss- 
ing wife, and the fact was announced thus: "Locates his 
wife in Napa." 

A test for the use of words is furnished by translating 
such sentences into a foreign language, when it will be 
noted that the translator will disregard the colloquialisms, 
finding it necessary to adopt the equivalents of the words 
that ought to have been employed. 

Section is another word that, despite a specific mean- 
ing, is employed for sundry purposes. One would not use 
a pair of compasses as a fork nor a scalpel to cut bread. 
Precision of speech is required to express scientific ideas, 
and we lose such precision by making technical words do 
the chores of literary work. Here are some examples : 

1. "The richest section of this mining district." 

2. "They have as good a property as there is in that 
section of the camp." 

3. "In the southern section of the State, they grow 
oranges." 

In all these, part or portion is meant. Section means 
the view of something along an intersecting plane, as used 
in geology or drawing. As the subdivision of a township, 
another meaning has been established. These are enough ; 
for other purposes we have other words. Even the Ameri- 
can Association for the Advancement of Science might 
have spared the word from doing duty to designate the 
divisions into which the Association is separated for the 



46 A GUIDE TO 

discussion of different subjects, so that there is a 'Section 
of Geology', another of Astronomy, and so forth. But it 
is too much to expect scientific men to make a study of 
the use of language; in that, they continue to be far be- 
hind people of lower intelligence. 

The words dip, hade, and pitch are used confusedly. It 
will be well to apply dip to the inclination (from the hori- 
zontal) of strata, veins, and faults, rejecting hade as a 
term no longer necessary and only likely to make confu- 
sion, because it refers to the angle from the vertical. The 
angle made by an ore-shoot in the plane of the vein is its 
pitch; this also should be measured from the horizontal. 
Thus : 

1. "The pitch of the apex of the saddles at Bendigo 
ranges from 10 to 30°, either north or south." 

2. ''The main orebody had a pitch of 80° southeast." 
The word siimer is used by several manufacturers of 

machinery to describe a device for treating slime, by con- 
centration of the valuable minerals in it. A siimer is a 
machine that mal-es slime ; for example, a tube-mill. A 
slime-table is one that treats this mill-product. 

"John Smith is manager of the Great Bullion Co." No, 
he is manager /or the company, and manager of the mine. 
Similarly, he may be consulting engineer to the neighbor- 
ing mining company. 

Use lessee, not leaser; the latter is a mere vulgarism 
and apt to be confused with the lessor, who is on the oppo- 
site side of the fence. As explained elsewhere, leaser is 
really a variation of lessor. 

"A partial history of the district indicates that, etc." 
Meaning a part history or an incomplete history or a 



TECHNICAL WRITING 47 

portion of the history, but not a prejudiced history, as 
might well be supposed. 

"At times the ore is very rich." Meaning, in places. 

A curious example of the misuse of technical terms is 
afforded by Gilpin county, Colorado, where it has become 
the local habit to speak of the concentrate saved on shak- 
ing tables as 'tailings'. It is literally a contradiction in 
terms. 

Value. — The misuse of this word, and its plural, is a 
good example of a colloquialism harmless enough in a 
stope or in a mill, but a solecism in literature. It is also 
an instance of the employment of the abstract for the 
concrete, one of the primary blunders in poor writing. 
''This mill is intended to extract the values in the ore" 
is a vague way of saying that it is meant to extract the 
gold or lead or silver or the valuable metals in the ore. 
Value is the desirability or worth of a thing; it is an 
attribute, not a substance. A man that designs a concen- 
trator to "catch the values," might as well build a rail- 
road to pursue a quadratic equation. Nevertheless, this 
vulgarism of the mining camp has crept into technical 
literature, and it can be found in articles otherwise well 
edited. Here are some examples : 

1. "In sinking the values were lost." Meaning that 
the ore became poor, or that the valuable ore ended. 

2. "The vanner saved all the values in the ore." 
Meaning, the valuable minerals that the ore contained, 
or all that v/as valuable in it. 

3. "And then the gold values are precipitated on zinc 
shavings. " No, it is the metallic gold that is precipitated ; 
you can precipitate a panic by reckless banking, but you 



48 A GUIDE TO 

don't precipitate anything so vague as values on some- 
thing so tangible as zinc shaving. 

4. "In this region there are found ore deposits, prin- 
cipally with gold and copper values." Meaning, chiefly 
valuable for gold and copper. 

5. "With the development of values in the quartz 
veins south of the Butte hill, there has been a scramble for 
claims." It would be better to say, "When it was proved 
that the quartz veins were valuable, etc." 

6. "The mill will be used to test the copper values of 
the rock from the Nonesuch mine." Meaning, the value 
of the ore as regards copper, or its copper content. 

7. "The gold values being largely free-milling. " Here 
the objectionable word can be dropped entirely. It is the 
metal in its native state that is docile to treatment. 

8. "Where cemented ground is handled, ample provi- 
sion must be made for breaking up the gravel and sepa- 
rating the values." In the first place you do not break 
gravel up or down; here 'disintegrate' is meant. You do 
not separate the values, except on an accountant 's page ; 
here it is the gold and platinum that were separated from 
the matrix of gravel. 

9. "The Broken Hill ore assays 16% lead, 15% zinc, 
and 11 oz. silver. Until a few years ago of these values 
only 65% of the lead and between 45 and 50% of the 
silver was saved." No values are stated. Valuable met- 
als are indicated. By omitting "of these values," the 
statement will be made clearer. 

10. "The ore carries $150 per ton in values." This is 
clumsy. "The ore assays $150 per ton" conveys all that 
is meant, for assays are not usually made for metals hav- 
ing no commercial value. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 49 

In many cases "the values in an ore" is used to express 
the profitable portion of it. Thus, someone "extracts the 
values by the cyanide process." Again, it stands for the 
relative richness or grade; thus: "The values fell off soon 
after the mill was built, ' ' meaning that the grade or tenor 
of the ore declined. The sentence as given is often a 
pathetic fact as well as sad grammar. 

"The values are in the galena," meaning that the gold 
or silver is closely associated with the galena, that is, to 
put it plainly, "the gold is with the galena." 

By dropping this misuse of value and values we shall 
clarify technical writing. 

Much the same line of criticism can be followed in re- 
gard to the use of the term strike, as : 

"The Cresson property reports a strike of high grade 
value from which shipments will be made." This is full 
of colloquialisms. The property does not report anything, 
this is done by the superintendent or some other man in a 
position to know. Property is a pretentious synonym for 
mine. Strike is used in mining to indicate a discovery, 
and it is over-worked, for The Evening Post tells of ore- 
strikes, as if the miners might strike an ichthyosaurus; 
they would then strike for higher wages. It is a pity to 
make strike do double duty, for it tends to confusion. 
When you hear that there is "a strike at the Bullion 
mine," you are left in doubt whether the men have 
abruptly cancelled their agreement to work or whether 
the miners have broken into a body of rich ore. Strike 
may Avell be reserved for the first of these meanings ; for 
the other service we have many words and phrases, such 
as "cut an orebody, " "discovered ore," "intersected a 
vein, " " broken into a bonanza, " " found rich ore, " " pene- 



50 A GUIDE TO 

trated an ore-shoot," and so forth. The use of the verb 
as in "They struck ore," "He expects to strike oil," is 
preferable to the employment of the noun, as in "He 
made a strike," "There is news of a rich strike." Used 
thus it is a colloquialism, and while colloquialisms may by 
usage become legitimatized, it is safe to say that the 
only reason for employing them is the fact that they do 
the duty no other words can perform as well. If a collo- 
quialism can be avoided, it should be ; and if the 
colloquial use of a word makes for confusion by reason of 
other legitimate uses, it is well to forbear. Strike is the 
compass course of a line and is so used in mining geology 
and surveying; that is its proper technical service. In 
economics, it signifies the rupture of relations between an 
employer and his employees. These two usages do not 
conflict; they suffice; let us not overwork our terms, lest 
they fail to carry our meaning. 

Returning to the quotation: It was a "strike of high 
grade value," meaning a 'discovery' of rich ore or a 
'find' of valuable ore. High-grade should be hyphenated. 
Then it is said that shipments will be made from "the 
strike of high grade value." This is an arithmetical ex- 
ercise, for only in mathematics can you transfer high- 
grade values. The whole sentence, interpreted into plain 
English, means: "It is reported from the Cresson mine 
that rich ore has been found and that shipments will be 
made shortly." Of course, the shipments must be made 
soon; if not, the reference to shipments is unnecessary; 
ore once discovered is not supposed to lie in the ground 
indefinitely. So the statement may well be abbreviated 
to: "It is reported that rich ore has been found in the 
Cresson mine." 



TECHNICAL WRITING 51 

Oreboclies and lodes are often described as permanent, 
meaning- thereby persistent or continuous. For example : 

1. "The ore deposit is of a permanent character." 

2. "The officials of the company feel confident that it 
is a permanent vein." 

3. "Gash veins are short-lived, but a true fissure vein 
is usually permanent. ' ' 

The only way to make an orebody permanent is to leave 
it in the ground ; the whole trend of mining is to destroy 
the permanence of aggregations of ore, to break them, to 
remove them, and to treat them so that a part, as bullion, 
goes to the mint or to the manufacturer, while the remain- 
der disappears into the creek that receives the tailing 
from the mill or the slag from the smelter. 



The lack of a classical education leads many scientific 
men into vulgar blunders. For instance, in Science, the 
official organ of the cult in America, there appeared re- 
cently such statements as that "the underlying strata was 
a soft limestone," and that "this phenomena was closely 
observed by us," and that "we owe this data to the cour- 
tesy of Mr. ." No wonder that Professor Hilgard 

remarks that the restriction of the scientific curriculum 
to the limited language-study of the high-schools is yield- 
ing unfortunate results. 

Sainte-Beuve said of Napoleon, and Matthew Arnold 
of General Grant, that clear-cut thinking is indispensable 
to the best writing. 



UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES 

Very. — This unpretentious little word is worked to 
death, like the donkeys of a mining camp, which are apt 
to be hidden under a big' load of lumber or other supplies. 
Nine times out of ten very can be omitted without loss, 
because it serves only to increase the number of w^ords. 

Very pre-supposes a comparison. A four-story brick 
building is very large to those who live at Salmon Cit}^ 
Idaho, and it may there do glory to the name of a former 
senator, but it is as nothing to those who live among the 
'sky-scrapers' of New York. A mine with a 1000-ft. shaft 
is very deep to the scribe who writes on the WeeMy Howl 
in a new camp in southern Nevada, but it is shallow com- 
pared with the openings on the Comstock lode. A vein 
that is ten feet across is very wide as seen at Cripple 
Creek, but it is a thin seam to a man vrho is working in 
the Homestake mine. It is all a matter of comparison, 
and unless your reader knows your standard, the very 
possesses no significance. 

When a man says that "the ore of the Great Wildcat 
Extended mine is very rich," it depends upon what his 
idea of rich ore happens to be. On the ^Mother Lode in 
California 15 dwt. ore is very rich ; at Goldfield, in Ne- 
vada, such stuff is low-grade. If you do not know the 
writer's notion of richness, his very is wasted. 

Or again, someone writes: "The district is very pros- 
perous, there being many very rich mines, some of which 
are very deep and very extensive, so that there is a very 
good hope of very many years of very successful develop- 
ment." It is a debauch of emphasis, and all of it is 



TECHNICAL WRITING 53 

wasted unless you know the writer's standard of pros- 
perity, richness, depth, extent, and so forth. Cut out 
each very and the sentence will lose nothing. 

There is an air of exaggeration about statements bur- 
dened with a frequent very; on the contrary, there is a 
suggestion of moderation and assured knov/ledge in the 
descriptions that convey ideas of relation without a re- 
peated lashing of that little word. Out of ten verys, nine 
can be dropped without affecting a statement, save to 
strengthen it. 

Occasionally the effort to emphasize defeats itself, 
thus: 

1. ^'This machine makes a very perfect separation of 
the mineral from the gangue. ' ' 

2. ''It is very obvious that the mine is well worth the 
price asked." 

In both these cases the very weakens the force of the 
statement, instead of reinforcing it, for a perfect separa- 
tion cannot be bettered; it is apparent that if the writer 
means anything, he means that the separation is almost 
perfect. In the second case, a thing is obvious or it is 
not; it can neither be more obvious nor almost obvious; 
from the unnecessary emphasis we are led to suspect that 
it was not wholly obvious that "the mine was well worth 
the price." 

When a nurse tells a fairy story to a child, she will 
use many verys, which fall on the imagination of the 
child like a hailstorm on a flower-bed. The excessive 
use of very is childish ; it makes a constant call for exag- 
geration. It becomes wearisome. If the reader will apply 
the test to the average writing of the day, he will find 



54 A GUIDE TO 

that little is lost by omitting very, and much, though not 
'very much', may be gained thereby. 

Other adjectives that are bullied in the same way by 
redundant adverbs are straight, vertical, unique. 

''A very straight tunnel into the mountain." 

*'The vein is very vertical." 

^*A very unique child, said I." 

"A rather unique gathering of our profession." 

A thing is either unique or it is not, there is no degree 
of uniqueness. So also a thing is vertical or it is not ; it 
is straight or it is crooked. Fortunately, there are a few 
words the meaning of which is unassailable. 

Doubtless, without doubt, and undoubtedly are often 
used incorrectly as the equivalent of 'perhaps' or 'prob- 
ably.' 

"Doubtless the ore will be found again by sinking 
deeper." 

"Undoubtedly the coming season will afford a better 
supply of water." 

Here doubtless and undoubtedly are used in an apolo- 
getic way, and suggest anything but positiveness of be- 
lief. In both cases uncertainty must necessarily prevail. 
Thus the meaning of useful words is undermined. An- 
other awkward locution is exemplified by "There is no 
doubt but that the lode is stronger in depth," in which 
case undoubtedly might be employed to advantage. 

Somewhat and Probably. — "Anyone who hopes to 
write well had better begin by abjuring somewhat." So 
say the authors of 'The King's English'. It will also be 
well for writers to deny themselves the frequent use of 
qualifying adverbs, such as perhaps, about, probably, and 



TECHNICAL WRITING 55 

rather. As has been said by an authority, this ''intem- 
perate orgy of moderation" amounts to a disease, especi- 
ally among British writers. 

1. "A sampling plant was built perhaps five years 
ago." 

2. "A somewhat important development is announced 
fromElOro." 

3. "The designs for an installation of any consider- 
able magnitude should not be approved until," and so 
forth. 

4. "The lode is probably about ten feet wide." 

5. "The quartz is rather hard and the walls are very 
straight. ' ' 

6. "He uses a solution of about 2 per cent cyanide, 
which is perhaps sufficiently strong. ' ' 

7. "The mine is about two miles from the town." 

8. "On the whole it is perhaps the largest property in 
the district." 

9. "It is rather rare to see such a rich vein. ' ' 
These examples will suffice; it is indeed an orgy of 

moderation. In every case the qualifying adverb is a 
mere frill, and can be dropped without loss of meaning. 
It reminds one of the custom that once obtained, among 
the managers for English mining companies, of initialing 
a statement of accounts and of adding "E. & 0. E.," 
which stood for "Errors and Omissions Excepted." So 
every statement is subject to error, for is it not human 
to err? The qualifying adverb does not shift the respon- 
sibility, it only burdens the sentence. For instance, in No. 
4, a man says the lode is "about ten feet wide" ; we know 
well enough that the width of a lode varies from 



56 A GUIDE TO 

point to point, and that it may be 9I/2 ft. in one place 
and 111/4 ft. in another, so that the general statement that 
''it is 10 ft." expresses the fact; if you are speaking of a 
particular measurement at a specific spot it is better to 
say 10 ft. 3 in. or 9 ft. 9 in., than to qualify it with an 
about. It is an unscientific mode of expression ; you know 
the width is ten feet or you don't; if you do know it, say 
so ; if you don 't, say what you do know. In the same waj^ 
in regard to the distance of the mine from the town 
(quoted in No. 7), to say that it is "about two miles" will 
not absolve you from error if it proves to be three miles, 
and as an attempt at accuracy it is but a pseudomorph, be- 
cause the distance will depend upon which road you take. 
Moreover, in practical life, the exact distance is less im- 
portant than the condition of the road; a four-mile haul 
over a good road will be less expensive than a two-mile 
haul over a bad one. Be accurate; don't merely affect it. 
A man who says "the lode is about ten feet wide" and 
"the vein is rather hard" and "the ore is probably free- 
milling," is likely to state that it contains "about two 
ounces" of gold per ton when on an average it carries 
only 15 dwt., and would probably estimate his ore reserves 
50% too high. 

The Unnecessary Plural. — A bad habit, which is be- 
coming steadily worse, is the squandering of the plural. 
Writers speak of "the ores" of a mine and "the rocks" 
in which the lode occurs, when they have no idea of a 
variety or a number of either the one or the other. 
Slimes, concentrates, fines, tailings, and sands are all 
terms that are used by some people only in their plural 
form. It is a Mormonism of style. And apart from its 



TECHNICAL WRITING 57 

incorrectness, it causes the loss of a useful inflection. If 
a mill produces more than one kind of 'concentrate' or a 
mine several varieties of 'ore,' it is possible to suggest 
the fact by the employment of the plural. Moreover, the 
excessive sibilant is unpleasant in compounding, as in 
'slimes-plant,' 'sands-vat,' 'tailings-sump.' 

A concentrate is the product of a process of concentra- 
tion; if several such products are formed (as happens 
occasionally), they are correctly known as concentrates. 

A tailing is the refuse from a metallurgical process ; if 
the refuse from several processes or more than one mill 
should meet, the result could be described as tailings. 

Many writers appear to be unaware that concentrate 
and tailing are dictionary words, for they use only the 
plural forms. 

Thus: "The gravels rest upon the older schists of the 
region." But it was of a particular deposit of gravel that 
the writer of this sentence was telling, and the "older 
schists" stood for otie particular formation of schist. The 
two unnecessary plurals only befog the meaning, which 
is that "the gravel rests upon the older schist of the 
region." 

The stuff that goes through a screen can be divided 
into 'coarse' and 'fine'; there is no need to pluralize the 
second into 'fines,' any more than there is to put the first 
in the uncomfortable position of ' coarses. ' 

Occasionally the loss of the plural will seriously ham- 
per the expression of an idea, thus: "An experiment was 
made on two sands having the following analysis. (Then 
came the analysis.) Which of these two sands is the 
finest?" Incidentally,' "finest" should be 'finer.' Or 



58 A GUIDE TO 

again, "As at El Oro, one can calculate exactly the ex- 
traction from a sand when the sizing test has been made." 
Now try to express the distinctions made in these sen- 
tences by the use of the plural only. Surely it is unschol- 
arly, and therefore unscientific also, to throw away a 
grammatical inflection of so elementary a nature. It will 
be found that loose writers, that is, those who do not 
think clearly and therefore are willing to write muddily, 
will scatter their plurals in every direction; in this there 
is a profuseness that is in keeping with the exaggerations 
of irresponsible journalism. It is another example of the 
choice of the abstract for the concrete, a blunder that 
marks the careless writer. 

Per cent should be used only as a term of precision and 
when accompanied by an exact statement of quantity. 
Thus: "In treating this gravel an abundance of water is 
necessary, otherwise a great per cent of the gold will be 
lost." Here it is used in a vague manner, and the word 
part or portion would be more appropriate. 

"But this class forms only a small percentage of the 
young men of this community." No percentage is given, 
the statement is vague, and the word proportion should 
be substituted for percentage. 

Excepting is often used in place of except, as : " Your 
definition is correct, excepting that you do not go far 
enough." 

Similarly, partially is used where partly is required. 
"The vat was partially filled." Partially means with par- 
tiality, and it should never be used without considering 
the claims of partly. These errors, like the use of 'ex- 
perimentalize' ill place of 'experiment', of 'preventative' 



TECHNICAL WRITING 59 

for 'preventive', are evidence of an effort to be impressive 
by using long words. 

"Consistency is a jewel," but consistence is a quality 
belonging to molasses in a jug or to the slime in a cyanide 
vat. 

'Suppositious' is a common error for supposititious. 

Approximate and approximately are used too often as 
an elegant variation on about, as ''He is approximately 
90 years old." 

Series is employed instead of number, even when there 
is no succession or connection between the events or ob- 
jects mentioned, as "A series of scattered orebodies in 
the limestone." 

There is a tendency to use it too much. Whenever at 
a loss for either a nominative or an objective, the scrib- 
bler throws an it into his sentence. Thus: "By the 
arrangement shown the centre of gravity will be low, and 
it leaves a compartment at one end." The "centre of 
gravity" leaves no compartment, the "arrangement" 
does so. We might say : "By the arrangement shown the 
centre of gravity is placed low, and a compartment is left 
at one end." 

A similar criticism may be made in regard to the exces- 
sive employment of them and their. Thus: "Iron poles 
are to be avoided on account of the danger to line-men 
and their short life due to rusting." The line-men are not 
short-lived; and, though eventually they die, they do not 
rust ; it is the iron of the poles that oxidizes. 

"The slime from the mill is treated in a second plant 
and its contents are cyanided at a small expense." From 



60 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

this the reader might infer that the contents of the sec- 
ondary plant were subjected to cyanidation. 

Referring to limestone rocks, a writer says: ''In the 
residual clays left by their dissolution the farmers fre- 
quently make low wages by gophering after the liberated 
lead." The farmers did not undergo dissolution, other- 
wise they would not have been able to go for the lead. 



CONCERNING TITLES 

The title Mr. means nothing. There was a time Vv^hen 
master or mister was a specific title of honor. It is so no 
longer. Similarly, squire denoted a shield-man or attend- 
ant on a knight. In England it is the custom to address 
a letter to your grocer as Mr. Henry Smith, but to address 
a letter to your friend as Henry Smith Esq. In America 
Esq. is used by a few people at Boston, but elsewhere it is 
rare. Squire and Esq. are verbal derelicts of the feudal 
system and they possess historic interest, but they have 
nearly passed out of use. In America it is as correct to 
write to Mr. Roosevelt (in his private capacity*) as plain 
Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, as it is to write Mr. Henry Smith 
when you send your grocer his check in payment of the 
month's account. In England they still distinguish be- 
tween amateurs and professionals by prefixing Mr. to the 
first and omitting it before the names of the second, so 
that you read of a cricket match in which Mr. Henry 
O'Brien is bowled by Jones. The latter did not lose his 
pronomen nor his title of Mr. because he was a bowler but 
because he was a professional, the batsman (Mr. O'Brien) 
being an amateur. In cricket the adoption of this style 
has its convenience but, nevertheless, it is a humorous sur- 
vival of a class distinction. In America the class dis- 
tinction is gone, and so is that between the amateur and 
the professional ; here amateurs are scarce, for we make 

*In writing to the President officially, it is correct to address 
the envelope "To the President. The White House. Washington. 
D. C." and to begin the communication thus: *'The President: 
Sir—" 



62 A GUIDE TO 

a business out of sport ; also we have no class distinctions, 
only differences of bank balances. 

Therefore Mr. is meaningless and in technical writing 
it can be largely omitted. As a matter of taste it is pref- 
erable, and as a matter of accuracy it is better, to use 
the initials or the first name. Thus: *'The engineer in 
charge of construction is C. E. Palmer" is better than 
writing that he was Mr. Palmer. At the second reference, 
it is usual to omit the initials and to say Mr. Palmer, 
as in ordinary conversation. 

Never prefix Mr. or any other title to the names of the 
dead; that is the worst snobbery of all. Thus: *'In the 
death of Kelvin, England lost a great investigator." **By 
the death of Charles A. Molson, the mining profession lost 
one of its leading members." To put Lord before the 
immortal dead is bathos and to place Mr. before the name 
of a vanished personality is like bowing to a mummj'. 

Then we come to the use of such titles as Professor and 
Doctor, with their abbreviations Prof, and Dr. In Eng- 
land only a physician is addressed as Doctor. Surgeons, 
veterinaries, and dentists are denied the privilege. So 
far so funny, but the custom mentioned has not prevented 
doctors of divinity and doctors of science from taking to 
themselves the title usually associated with the healing 
art. In America, it is chaos ; the titles Professor and Doc- 
tor are employed so loosely that they are well-nigh mean- 
ingless. "We may well follow the example of Samuel John- 
son, who, filthoii^h in receipt of a doctorate of law.s from 
Oxford University, never signed himself or referred to 
himself as Dr. Johnson, he was Mr. Johnson when he was 
not plain Sam Johnson. For my part I cannot see why a 



TECHNICAL WRITING 63 

Master of Arts should not be addressed as Master if a 
Doctor of Philosophy is entitled to be called Doctor. More- 
over, in the West, an Attorney General is usually called 
General and a Surveyor General is easily mistaken for a 
military chieftain of the highest rank. They are as much 
'generals' as the general dealer in merchandise or the man 
who has general supervision of street construction. In 
Kentucky every gentleman is a colonel, at Washington 
every scientist is a doctor; in fact, my friends of the 
United States Geological Survey will, I trust, not be of- 
fended if I say that it is apparent, from official sources of 
news, that the chiefs are Doctors, the seconds in command 
are Professors, and the chain-bearers are plain Misters. 
One of the worst sinners in this regard is Science, the 
organ of the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science. The editor of that weekly magazine bestows 
his accolade with rare impartiality and gives degrees with 
unrestrained generosity. Lately, the list of contents gave 
the names of a Professor who was not — and never had 
been — a professor ; of a Doctor, who was an M.A. and not 
a Ph.D. ; of a Mister who had a Ph.D. from Columbia. 
The gradation of title merely expressed the editor's sense 
of the degree of courtesy it was proper to pay the several 
writers. Of course, such misuse of title is grotesque. We 
love to call some of the veterans 'Doctor,' for they got 
their Ph.D. at a time and at a place where the honor meant 
something; nowadays every little college grants docto- 
rates, so that they have no significance unless the name 
of the grantor university is affixed. I remember a friend 
of mine in Colorado who was given an honorary Ph.D. by 
the State University because he was the promoter of a 



64 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

paper-mill and other useful local enterprises, and my 
friend valued the honor chiefly because it made him eli- 
gible for the University Club at Denver. Furthermore, a 
doctorate does not- indicate even the same degree, for Dr. 
Edward D. Peters and Dr. F. L. Bosqui are graduated 
physicians, although both have become authorities in 
metallurgy ; they are not doctors of philosophy, as might 
be inferred. As to professor, that title belongs first to 
the peripatetic corn-doctor and next to the instructor in 
dancing. At Harvard the professors are addressed as 
Mr., and the unnecessary use of Professor is deemed pro- 
vincial ; although, in speaking of lecturers, the term 'pro- 
fessor' is employed, in order to distinguish them from 
'instructors'. 

In a democracy rank does not exist outside the army 
and the navy, and among civilians good taste dictates the 
minimum use of titles. The true American has no supe- 
rior, and no inferior. In Europe titles express positions, 
class distinctions, and social courtesies, and they form a 
part of the old-world customs; they have historic war- 
rant. In America, they are solecisms. 

The following are examples of correct usage : 
''Mr. James F. Kemp, professor of geology in Colum- 
bia University." 

"He graduated from Cornell University." 
"In deference to the wishes of Mr. S. B. Christy, the 
dean of the* mining department of the University of Cali- 
fornia." 

When you refer to persons bearing foreign titles, be 
careful to be correct, for to a foreigner they mean much 
and to be careless is either to be discourteous or to confess 
your ignorance. 



MATTERS OF USAGE 

The split infinitive is not always avoidable; occasion- 
ally it serves to convey a special meaning. Avoid it, how- 
ever, if you can. 

The omission of the definite article (the) before foreign 
names commencing with the definite article (Le, La, II) 
recommends itself on the score of repetition, but it is likely 
to cause confusion. The French or Spanish article joined 
to another word is as much a part of the name as the noun 
itself, thus: "We have something interesting to show 
you in the Mexico mine and also in the El Oro" is clear, 
but the omission of the article before El Oro would sug- 
gest that there was *' something interesting" in the dis- 
trict of El Oro, in which the El Oro mine is situated. Even 
in Spanish, one would say ^^el distrito de El Oro^^ or **Za 
mina El Oro/^ not '*?a mina Oro^^ or ^^el distrito de Oro.''^ 
So also we speak of ''the La Rose mine" at Cobalt and 
**the Le Roi mine" at Rossland, and even "the Las Dos 
Estrellas mine" at El Oro. 

Preposition Verbs. — The use of prepositions with verbs, 
and the consequent ending of a sentence with an insig- 
nificant word, is a defect peculiarly British, although not 
unknown on this side of the Atlantic. For example : 

1. "The finest mine I met with in my travels." 

2. "No large body of payable ore has been met with. ' ' 

3. "At that time it was intended to sink a shaft along 
the drive at a place where the new make of stone had 

The shares are being dealt in at a large pre- 



66 A GUIDE TO 

5. * ' A road has been reported on as practicable. ' ' 

6. ''All but 200 tons was operated on in Pahang." 

7. "The slime separated makes up a capacity of 500 
tons per day." 

8. ''This is true in dividing up geological time." 

9. "The influence of the old views has so clung on 
that the tendency has been to give up the idea of time." 

10. "The vein has been cut, and new men will be put 
on to drift on it." 

11. "The vein is split up into stringers." 

12. "The disturbance tilted up the strata." 

13. "End bearers 12 by 12 in. let in 16 in. into each 
wall." 

14. "The ore is fed in at the curved end." 

15. "The weak solution is turned on at first." 

It will be noted that usually the preposition forming 
part of the verb is followed immediately by another prepo- 
sition ; this is ugly. Moreover, while in speaking, the verb 
and its preposition may be held together so as to effect a 
separation from the following preposition, in writing this 
is not indicated. We do not write : "The finest mine I met- 
with in my travels," but we space the words equally, so 
that it might be read: "The finest mine I met with-in my 
travels." In German such verbs are frankly compounded, 
and if they are to be used in English it might be well to 
hyphenate them, but it would be better still to avoid the 
use of them altogether. 

It was "the finest mine he saw" that he meant; he did 
not meet the mine, nor did the mine come forth to meet 
him. Similarly, in the second example 'intersected' or 
'found' would serve. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 67 

The third quotation is obviously Australian, for 'make 
of stone' betrays its origin, even if 'drive' (meaning 
'drift') did not do so. In this ease the new orebody had 
been 'cut' or 'exposed'. 

The fourth is often to be read in financial papers; it 
can be circumvented by saying: "There were dealings in 
the shares at a large premium." 

So also the fifth and sixth are common ; we read that 
a mine has been reported on, etc. Why not say: "A re- 
port on the mine has been made." 

In the seventh makes up should be 'constitutes' or 
'forms'. 

In the eighth, the preposition can be dropped, while in 
the next quotation both prepositions have some value and 
it is rash to suggest an improvement. We might say that 
"The influence of the old views has clung to geology so 
that the tendency is to abandon the idea of time." 

In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth the prepositions are 
redundant. In the thirteenth the confusion between the 
preposition in and the abbreviated form of 'inches', is 
awkward. 'Projecting' into the wall or 'inserted' into 
it might express the meaning. 

As to the fourteenth, evidently the ore is not fed out; 
the in is not needed. This is like upraise, which is found 
in some mine reports, as though anyone raised downward. 
In the fifteenth example turned on must be left as it is, 
with the ugly second preposition following it, or another 
phrase must be used. Turn on and turn off, as meaning 
to start or stop the flow (as in this case, of a solution), 
are required in technical writing because we have no 
equivalent that will do duty for them. It is not intended 



68 A GUIDE TO 

to state that all these preposition-verbs can be dispensed 
with, but it is suggested that certain ungainly sentences 
can be modified to advantage by avoiding the use of 
them. 

' * The visiting engineer should be put up by the owner 
of the mine on the property." An Anglicism; a man is 
'put up' when he is entertained, and if the hospitality is 
inadequate he must put up with it as best he can. 

''Upon the melting down of the charge." How does 
this differ from the melting up? Many metallurgists pre- 
fer the latter, although the first suggests the subsidence 
that follows liquefaction of fragments. Neither prepo- 
sition is necessary. 

A mill is started up and then is closed down. In these 
cases the preposition gives added force and is excusable, 
though unnecessary and ugly. On the Rand the white 
men 'boss up' the coolies. We learn that "with the large 
machines almost half of the time was taken up in putting 
up and taking down." It reads like an obstacle race. 

"The velocity of the escaping gases is too great to per- 
mit of the settling out of the finest particles." If the 
particles settle, they settle ; that is enough. Of course, 
there are people who settle down in the country because 
they cannot settle up their debts in the city, but that is 
neither here nor there. 

It is worth remarking that so clever a book as 'The 
King's English,' which offers an effective criticism of rep- 
resentative English writers, is guilty of the following 
sentences: "It is insulting to the reader, implying that 
he was not worth working out the sentence for before it 
was put down." After such a performance we venture 



TECHNICAL WRITING 



69 



to express opposition to the authors' approval of the ter- 
mination of a sentence with an unimportant word, as will 
happen often when preposition-verbs are employed. 

A Western miner, who has overslept, will say that he 
has 'slept in,' and after he has been to the boarding-house 
he will state that he is ' full up. ' A little later he will ' hide 
out ' from the f or^eman by ' climbing up ' into an ' upraise. ' 
Why should we perpetuate the blunders of the illiterate? 
The miner has much to teach us, especially how to find ore 
and how best to extract it, but the selection of terms or 
the use of language is not his province, and he does not 
thank us for putting him in a false position. 

In speaking or writing concerning technical matters, 
it will be found that there is an insistent multitude of 
preposition-verbs. If note is taken of their clumsiness 
and of the awkward sentences produced by the use of 
them, it is likely that they will be avoided. It is easy to 
do so. Try a re-arrangement of the sentence or a substi- 
tution of terms. It is good practice. 

Most preposition-verbs can be replaced advantageously 
by plain verbs ; for example : 



aim at 


= attain 


fall off 


= 


decline 


arrive at 


= reach 


go on 


=: 


advance 


call for 


= ' demand 


keep up 


■==. 


maintain 


carry out 


= - perform 


look after 


= 


watch 


come in 


= enter 


make up 


= 


compose 


deal with 


= treat 


prove up 


= 


test 


do away with 


^-- discard 


put in 


= 


insert 


end up 


==^ conclude 


work out 


= 


devise 



Some of the prepositions attached to compound verbs 



70 A GUIDE TO 

are used adverbially, for they modify the verb, but this 
does not affect the argument. 

Tautology. — ''The shaft is being sunk deeper." A 
shaft must be sunk deeper, if it is sunk at all. 

"The men on that shift drove the drift forward four 
feet." They would not be likely to drive it backward or 
even laterally, for then it would become a cross-cut. 

"It is radically wrong in its inception from the start." 
Words, mere words. Those indicated are not needed. 

Payable means due as to payment or capable of being 
discharged by payment. It is used in mining as a syno- 
nym for profitable. The ore does not pay, nor is it able 
to pay what is unpaid and due ; the use of the word is to 
be condemned, for it was introduced by illiterate persons 
and is a blunder. We do not need payable ; use profitable. 
Pay-ore is now a recognized technical term and is out of 
the reach of a protest. 

It is better to say 20 ft. v^ide than 20 ft. in width. 
Similarly, 10 ft. long is preferable to 10 ft. in length. Ex- 
cept when not preceded by a number, as: "The orebody 
has increased in length as the mine has been deepened." 
Or: "This vat differs in breadth from the other." 

The latter is emploj^ed in a confusing way; sometimes 
it is used where last is required. Thus : "I am using 18% 
coke on the charge and I may get to 17 or even 16%. The 
latter figure I hope to reach." Here there are three per- 
centages ; he means the last of them. 

"The gangue minerals consist of calcite, quartz, dolo- 
mite, gypsum, and calamine, native silver occurring in 
vugs of the latter." Occur is overdone by many writers. 
"Latter" should be last. As gangue consists of minerals, 
necessarily, the use of "minerals" is undesirable. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 71 

The Indefinite Pronoun. — As a rule, educated English- 
men use their own language skillfully, because they re- 
ceive instruction in grammar while at school, and they 
are not in a hurry. Nevertheless, they have two peculiar 
faults. One of these is the use of preposition-verbs, as 
already mentioned ; the other is the frequent employment 
of the indefinite pronoun one, as in : 

"One would not be inclined to believe the statement." 
In some instances it becomes almost an obsession, as in 
the case of a man with whom I discussed the future of the 
Royal School of Mines. He said something like this: 
"Looking at the subject broadly, one would suppose that 
the Government would give better support to the plan, 
for one can see no reason why they should not do so ; and 
certainly one has a right to expect something in behalf 
of so important an institution; but in matters like these 
one almost despairs of one's countrymen." It is a sort 
of mock-modesty, an exaggerated effort to avoid egotism 
and self-assertion. It may be that those of us who live 
in America are a bit too assertive, but at least we know 
our own minds and are willing to accept the responsibility 
for the statements we make; instead of fathering them 
upon a shadowy something that masquerades in the garb 
of a shamefaced pronoun. Examples of this peculiarly 
British habit are easy to obtain ; here is one from a book 
(and a good book too) by H. G. Wells; speaking of the 
dispersal of population by reason of improved locomo- 
tion, he says : 

"The towns one inferred, therefore, would get slacker, 
more diffused, the country-side more urban. From that, 
from the spatial widening of personal interests that ensued, 



72 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

one could infer certain changes in the spirits of local poli- 
tics, so one went on to a number of fairly valid adumbra- 
tions. Then again starting from the practical superses- 
sion of all unskilled labor by machinery one can work out 
with a pretty fair certainty many coming social develop- 
ments, and the broad trend of one group of influences at 
least." And so he proceeds. Now, it happens that he is 
referring to his own opinions as expressed in a book pre- 
viously published, and it is no unknown person or public 
opinion or a debating society, but H. G. Wells, that is sup- 
posing and suggesting these interesting ideas. Put the 
first pronoun singular, the aggressive I, in the place of 
one and the v/hole statement gains vigor and an additional 
meaning, for these are his ideas, the ideas of a particular 
social philosopher, and not of a chimera ruminating in a 
vacuum. 

In the quotation from Wells, it will be noted that the 
numeral one occurs in the same sentence as the pronoun 
one; this is awkward. So also is the uncertainty as to 
whether one should be followed by a singular or plural 
pronoun. For instance : 

''People here know that this kind of speculation gives 
one a run for their money." Their should be one's, but 
even that is awkward. Get rid of the one. 

Of course, egotism is to be deprecated and the iteration 
of the first person singular is tiresome, but in technical 
writing, where definite statements are made by a specific 
observer and personal investigations are recorded by indi- 
viduals, it is a mere pretence of modesty to use these ele- 
gant variations. It detracts from the vividness of a state- 
ment without lessening the responsibility for it, and often 
results in awkward circumlocution. 



RELATIVE PRONOUNS 

Most writers employ that as an agreeable variation 
from the too frequent use of who and which ; they regard 
that as interchangeable with the two other relative pro- 
nouns and make euphony the sole arbiter of their choice. 
However, among the helps to clear expression I include 
the proper use of these three relative pronouns. The neg- 
lect to distinguish between the functions peculiar to them 
severally is an error common to technical, as to ordinary, 
literature. 

A relative clause is introduced by a relative pronoun ; 
it has a subject and predicate of its own, and refers to, 
describes, or limits a previous word. The word or group 
of words to which a relative pronoun refers is called its 
'antecedent'; as in the sentence "He in whom we trust," 
where "He" is the antecedent described by the clause 
' ' in whom we trust. ' ' 

The relative pronouns serve as reference-words and 
connectives. Who, with its possessive whose and its 
objective whom, is both singular and plural. It refers to 
living things, usually persons, sometimes animals. By 
poetic license inanimate objects may be personified, so 
that we may speak of "the city whose future is assured." 
But it is not well to say : ' ' The stamp whose descent on 
the die crushes the ore." It will be more correct to sub- 
stitute of v/hich and say ' ' The stamp, the descent of which 
on the die, etc. ' ' This is correct ; but it is awkward, which 
is a hint to reconstruct the sentence and omit the relative 
pronoun, thus: "The stamp, by descending on the die, 



74 A GUIDE TO 

crushes the ore upon it," or "The stamp falls on the die 
so as to crush the ore." 

What always refers to things, never to persons. The 
antecedent to what is not expressed. Thus : ' ' What will 
happen, no man can foretell." 

Which is not inflected. It refers, with rare exceptions, 
to things only. That also is not inflected, it refers either 
to persons or things. 

The main problem is the distinction between that on 
the one hand and who or which on the other. Gramma- 
rians and writers differ as regards the restrictive function 
of these relative pronouns. Thus: "The friends that I 
loved are dead" seems better than "The friends whom I 
loved," for it is the beloved friends as distinguished from 
ordinary friends that are dead. You say "The father 
whom I loved is dead," rather than "The father that I 
loved," because a man has only one father and the use of 
the term is sufficiently restrictive. 

A useful rule for the use of that and which is given by 
Professor Bain and quoted by Edwin A. Abbott in his in- 
valuable guidebook called 'How to Write Clearly'. It 
is : " When using the relative pronoun, use who and which 
where the meaning is 'and he', 'and it', etc., 'for he', 'for 
it', etc. In other cases use that, if euphony allows." 

Thus : "I heard this from the mine manager, who (and 
he) heard it from the man that was in charge of the 
work. ' ' 

Abbott also says: "Who and which introduce a new 
fact about the antecedent, whereas that introduces some- 
thing without which the antecedent is incomplete or unde- 
fined. Thus, in the above example, "mine manager" is 
complete in itself, and who introduces a new fact about, 



TECHNICAL WRITING 75 

him; "man" is incomplete, and requires "that was in 
charge of the work" to complete the meaning. 

Let us go into the matter a little deeper; but before 
venturing upon controversial ground, I shall state one 
safe guide to lucid diction, namely, whenever a sentence 
appears doubtful in the light of a rule, it is likely that the 
sentence (not the rule) needs changing. 

When in doubt, rebuild your sentence. 

Relative clauses are divisible into 'defining' and 'non- 
defining'; the function of the first is to limit the antece- 
dent, this limitation being effected in several ways. In 
whichever w^ay the defining clause does its work, it is 
essential to, and inseparable from, the antecedent. By 
this test it can be distinguished. Thus: "The process 
which will extract both the metals is likely to be 
adopted." In this case "will extract both the metals" is 
the relative clause introduced by which. The antecedent 
is "the process." The clause limits the kind of process 
referred to, by stating that it "will extract both the met- 
als"; therefore, it is a defining clause and should be pre- 
ceded by that. The sentence is better thus : "The process 
that will extract both the metals is likely to be adopted. ' ' 

"The process, which is of recent invention, extracts 
both the gold and silver at a cost of 50 cents per ton of 
ore." Here the relative clause ("which is of recent in- 
vention"), introduced by the pronoun which, is non-de- 
fining; it merely gives a bit of incidental information, leav- 
ing it to the principal clause to predicate concerning the 
antecedent ("the process") that it "extracts both the gold 
and silver at a cost of 50 cents per ton of ore. ' ' 

Exceptions will occur. There is an exception to every 
rule except the one that a man must be present when he is 



76 A GUIDE TO 

shaved. That does not permit direct modification by a 
preposition. We cannot say ' ' The man in that we trusted, ' ' 
although colloquially we may say ''The man that we 
trusted in" — an awkward clause, ending- with a preposi- 
tion. To 'trust' a man and to 'put your trust in' a man 
express two shades of meaning, of which the second is 
much the stronger. Finally, to serve the purpose, we say 
"The man in whom we trusted." Moreover, that is not 
available for all restrictive clauses, for it may make con- 
fusion with the conjunction that. Thus : "It w^as clear 
that that man could be of no service to me" or "We noted 
that the people that composed the mob were beside them- 
selves. " In both examples an unpleasant collision be- 
tween the conjunction and the pronoun can readily be 
avoided by reconstructing the sentences. In the first, the 
two thats, if spoken, are differently accentuated, but the 
distinction is lost in the written words. 

That when used of persons, has come to look archaic 
and who is preferable, except when the antecedent has 
attached to it a superlative. We say : 

"He is a man who dreams all day." 

But we may say : 

"The most impartial man that I know." 

Let us proceed. The removal of the defining clause 
destroys the meaning of the antecedent. This is a sure test 
for distinguishing the defining from the non-defining 
clause. Thus, in the sentence: "The process that will 
extract both the metals, is likely to be adopted," if the 
clause "that will extract both the metals" be omitted, the 
sentence becomes meaningless, for to say that "the process 
is likely to be adopted" without indicating in any way the 
particular process, would be senseless. In the other ex- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 77 

ample; "The process, which is of recent invention, ex- 
tracts both the gold and silver in the ore at a cost of 50 
cents per ton," the non-defining clause "which is of recent 
invention" can be detached without interfering with the 
significance of the principal statement that "the process 
extracts both the gold and silver, etc." Countless pro- 
cesses are "of recent invention" but only special processes 
will "extract gold and silver at a cost of 50 cents per ton 
of ore." 

Furthermore, a non-defining clause gives independent 
comment, description, or explanation — anything but limi- 
tation of the antecedent. In the last example, the relative 
clause can be written either as a parenthesis, or as a sepa- 
rate sentence, thus: "The process (which is of recent in- 
vention) extracts, etc," or "The process is of recent inven- 
tion and is said to extract both the gold and silver, etc." 
This cannot be done with the defining clause in the preced- 
ing example without decapitating the sentence, for "the 
process (which will extract both the metals) is likely to be 
adopted" or "the process is likely to be adopted and it 
will extract both the metals" are both badly expressed. 

To ascertain whether a clause does (or does not) define, 
remove it, and it will at once become apparent whether 
it is essential; if it is essential, it defines. Ambiguous 
cases are frequent, because some clauses are capable of 
performing either function and an undiscriminating writer 
may fail to make himself understood. The uncertainty, as 
to whether the clause is limiting or descriptive, can be ob- 
viated by making plain what is the antecedent. Re-write- 
the sentence, so that the meaning becomes clear beyond 
peradventure. 

Punctuation should be a guide in most doubtful cases, 



78 A GUIDE TO 

for the non-defining clause ought to be preceded by a 
comma. But this test is not reliable, simply because punc- 
tuation is often slighted. This much may be said: The 
information given by a defining clause must be taken at 
once, with the antecedent, or both are useless; while the 
information given by a non-defining clause will keep, the 
clause being complete in sense without the antecedent. 

A few examples will serve to illustrate. The first three 
are taken from one of my own books, written before I paid 
attention to the nicety of these distinctions. 

''A good millman has the clarified common sense which 
lies at the basis of true science." Here the last clause de- 
fines, the reference is to a special kind of common sense, 
namely, the kind that "lies at the basis of true science." 
However, in this case no misunderstanding is caused by 
the use of which, the clause carries the meaning of limita- 
tion in either case, and no harm has been done. Yet, the 
sentence is clearer and stronger with a that: ''A good 
millman has the clarified common sense that lies at the 
basis of true science." 

"That interval of time is utilized in the shifting of the 
material which the hammer blows are shaping." Here 
which is evidently an elegant variation from that, which 
has been used just before. The antecedent "material" is 
defined by the relative clause, which describes it as the 
particular material undergoing shaping by the action 
of the hammer. Therefore that is required in place of 
which. But, even more certainly, the sentence requires 
change. The that before "interval" might well be 
changed to this, for the reference is to an "interval of 
time" previously discussed. As soon as this is used the 



TECHNICAL WRITING 79 

hankering for euphony is satisfied and the that before 
'*the hammer" becomes comfortable. 

''The hammer which cracks open the nut may liberate 
the kernel without crushing it." This also may be 
amended, for the antecedent "hammer" is limited by the 
clause as one that ' ' cracks open the nut. ' ' Therefore that 
is better. Here also no particular harm is done, for the 
meaning is not upset, as it is in the additional examples, 
which are taken from other authors. 

"The Trail smelter is treating ore from the Sunshine 
mine at a profit which only runs 1.4% in copper, $1.50 in 
gold, and 23 cents in silver." This says that the "profit" 
runs so much, but it is the "ore" that contains the metals 
mentioned. The clause introduced by the relative pro- 
noun in this instance is defining and the information given 
must be taken with the antecedent, which is "ore," not 
"profit." "At a profit" is incidental and only needed for 
emphasis, since ore is not "treated" usually except "at a 
profit." Re-arrange the sentence, thus: "The Trail smelter 
is treating, at a profit, ore from the Sunshine mine that 
runs only, etc." Or "The Sunshine mine is supplying ore 
to the Trail smelter and this ore yields a profit, although 
containing only, etc." 

"There is a singular absence of oxidation in these ore- 
bodies which may be due to the protection afforded by the 
'drift' which has in the Glacial period mantled the whole 
district." Is the "oxidation" or are the "orebodies" due 
to the protection of the 'drift'! It is a mark of the non- 
defining clause that the information it conveys may be 
postponed ; it need not follow immediately on the heels of 
the antecedent. In this case which introduces the clause 
referring to the "oxidation"; therefore it is correct, 



80 A GUIDE TO 

though the sentence is ambiguous. But in the latter part 
of the same sentence there comes another relative clause 
describing the 'drift' and limiting it by stating that it is 
"the Glacial drift" responsible for the alluvium '^ man- 
tling the whole district." There might be other kinds of 
'drift', formed in other geological periods and distributed 
over parts of the district, but this is not one of them ; the 
clause defines, and the relative pronoun should be that. 
The mere doubt as to the meaning indicates that the sen- 
tence needs to be re-arranged, as thus : 

''In these orebodies there is a singular absence of oxi- 
dation, which may be due to the protection afforded by 
the 'drift' that mantled the whole district during the 
Glacial period." 

"The law has many defects and contains a number of 
clauses which should be changed as soon as possible." 
There are certain "clauses" requiring change, those that 
are "defective" should be changed: the clause is definitive 
and not incidental. That is preferable to which. 

"The elevation which occurred in Pleistocene time and 
which affected the American river, may have had some 
influence on the Yuba." The question is as to whether 
the writer refers to a particular elevation occurring in the 
Pleistocene period as distinguished from others that hap- 
pened earlier or later. Or does he refer to a solitary ele- 
vation during Pleistocene time? The context shows that 
he is speaking of one out of many elevations and that he 
indicates a particular one occurring at a particular period 
and causing specific geological changes, therefore the sen- 
tence ought to read: "The elevation that occurred in 
Pleistocene time, etc., may have had some influence on the 
Yuba." The second which (preceding "affected") is jus- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 81 

tified by the first (after "elevation"), and the doubtful 
use of one suggests the advisability of eliminating the sec- 
ond by a reconstruction of the sentence. When in doubt, 
re-write your sentence. A doubtful meaning is much worse 
than doubtful grammar. The sentence may be changed 
thus: "The elevation that affected the American river 
during Pleistocene time may have had some effect upon 
the Yuba also." 

"There is a mine in the downtown district which is in 
a position to furnish large quantities of manganese ore." 
The 'downtown' is a part of the Leadville district within, 
and adjacent to, the city itself. The question arises : Is 
the "mine" or the "district" to furnish the ore? The 
sentence says the latter ; other information points to the 
former. The two can be harmonized by employing that. 
Avoid ambiguity and rebuild the sentence, thus: "In the 
downtown district there is a mine that is in a position to 
furnish large quantities of manganese ore." The anteced- 
ent ("mine") calls for definition and marks the clause 
following that as belonging to the limiting kind. As re- 
arranged the meaning of the sentence is unmistakable and 
even the use of which, though erroneous, would not ob- 
scure the statement of fact. 

"The manager cut a vein in the Brooklyn ground which 
was developed at the 800-ft. level." If the reference is to 
the "ground," then which is correct, but it should be pre- 
ceded by a comma. If the "vein" is referred to, then that 
is required because the clause defines the particular vein 
"in the Brooklyn ground" and "developed at the 800-ft. 
level." The context proved that the latter was meant. 
The doubt indicates that the sentence requires change. It 
might be re-written thus: "The manager explored the 



82 A GUIDE TO 

Brookl3^n ground and cut the vein that had been developed 
at the 800-f t. level. ' ' Which 800-ft. level ? It was the 800- 
ft. level of the mine adjoining the Brooklyn. Let us call 
it the New York. Then we get at the true meaning of this 
cryptic sentence, thus: "The manager did some work in 
the Brooklyn ground and thereupon cut the vein that had 
been previously explored at the 800-ft. level of the New 
York mine, which adjoins." 

Occasionally even when which is correct, it is advisable 
to substitute the equivalent and it, thus: ''According to 
my tests 58% of the assay-value of the ore could be saved 
by a series of concentrations which, owing to the careful 
adjustments necessary, is not always obtainable in every 
day working of the mill." This can be improved, for the 
second sentence tumbles all over the first so as to confuse 
the idea to be conveyed, like two horses in tandem that 
want to turn round and shake hands with the driver. After 
the word ''concentrations" put a dash (to express the 
break in the sequence of thought) thus: " — and this, 
owing to the careful adjustments necessary, is not always 
practicable." A further improvement can be made by 
substituting but for the and. Practicable gives the exact 
intent of the eight words for which it is substituted. 

It is interesting to note that this distinction between 
the uses of the relative pronouns is observed in Eliza- 
bethan writers, notably Shakespeare himself. Many mod- 
ern authors disregard it. To technical writers it will be 
found a convenience in attaining lucidity of expression. 

For the sake of euphony, when the conjunction that 
has just been employed or when the antecedent is qualified 
by that, it may be necessary to avoid a disagreeable repe- 
tition of the word. Then use the participle, as "Men work- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 83 

ing underground" in place of "Men that work under- 
ground." Or use the infinitive, as ''He was the first man- 
ager that succeeded in making the mine profitable" may 
be changed to "He w^as the first manager to succeed in 
making, etc." Similarly, if which is overworked, substi- 
tute and this; thus : "He worked hard, which was all that 
he could do," can be written "He worked hard, and this 
was all, etc." Then, if despite these variants, the sentence 
is still overburdened with relative pronouns, there is one 
remedy : Re-wTite and re-arrange. The English language 
is not at fault, but you are. 

I am aware that no part of the present writing is so 
open to criticism as this attempt to elucidate the use of the 
relative pronouns. It is likely that in my effort to em- 
phasize the neglect of one of them, I shall be charged with 
undue partiality for that and a prejudice against which. 
The attempt to state useful rules may read like an effort 
to establish irrefragable laws. Our language, so the critic 
v/ill say, has other devices to mark the restrictive clause 
and it is easy to avoid the monotony of an arbitrary rule. 
For instance, the definite article the attached to a noun 
not previously made definite in the context, distinctly 
points forward to the relative clause, or whatever may 
take its place, as a limiting expression. Professor Whit- 
neys says: "Some authorities hold that who and which 
are to be used as co-ordinating or simply descriptive re- 
latives, but that as limiting a descriptive. . . . But 
the best English usage by no means requires such a dis- 
tinction."* Again it may be asserted that "the relative 
clause is not necessarily of one sort or the other, it is fre- 

♦'Essentials of English Grammar.' Page 77. 



84 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

quently both, or hovers delicately on the margin between 
the two. ' ' So says Professor Bradley of the University of 
California. He also argues against any attempt 'Ho force 
speech into a cast-iron mould in defiance of its chartered 
freedom of ages. Every predication about a thing, no 
matter what its form, logically limits it, defines it, narrows 
the concept." 

So it is well to go gently. As a matter of fact there is 
no arbiter in such matters, save the reader. Put yourself 
in his place. Use such words as will best enable the trans- 
fer of thought with least worry to the recipient. In some 
cases you may avoid ambiguity by using that instead of 
which-, in other cases that is no better than which and only 
serves as a stumbling-block to the transfer of ideas. So 
I apologize if my statements have seemed too arbitrary ; 
my purpose is simply to stimulate the attention of techni- 
cal writers to some details of their literary mechanism. 

This discussion concerning relative pronouns is worth 
while, if for no other purpose than the light it throws on 
the necessity for re-constructing doubtful sentences. Gram- 
mar is worthy of respect, euphony is desirable, idiom is 
not to be neglected ; but precedence must be given to clear- 
ness of statement. Sacrifice everything to this attainment 
and you will find that you have included most of the other 
qualities. It is seldom necessary to forego any of them, 
for the resources of our language are equal to all the de- 
mands of exact and felicitous expression. Be lucid, and 
all these other qualities shall be yours, as you desire them 
and practise to attain them. 



EXAMPLES OF JOURNALESE 

1. "The strike in the Ophir mine has been demon- 
strated to be of a permanent character." This refers to 
the finding of ore ; the writer means that the lode has been 
proved to be persistent. 

2. ''This is no secondary enrichment, it is a permanent 
orebody. ' ' Here also permanent is used instead of persist- 
ent or continuous. 

3. "The principal work being prosecuted at this time 
is in the shaft." 

4. "The Butte & Arizona Co. is prosecuting develop- 
ment work with vigor." 

5. "A vigorous campaign of development is being 
prosecuted. ' ' 

Certainly, the writers of these sentences ought to be 
prosecuted. In the first example, the word 'done' would 
serve the purpose and in the second 'pushing' would suf- 
fice. The third quotation is an example of disproportion- 
ate language, for it happens to refer to unimportant min- 
ing operations, and it might have been stated that "steps 
have been taken to develop the mine rapidly" or "it has 
been arranged to sink the shaft without delay. ' ' 

6. "It is announced that concentrating facilities will 
be provided for near the mouth of the tunnel," meaning 
thereby that a concentrator is to be built near the mouth 
of the adit. 

7. "The Frisco Co. is unable to place its new equip- 
ment in commission." That is, the company is unable to 
start its new machinery (for lack of fuel). 

8. ' ' Vigorous cross-cutting is being inaugurated. ' ' 



86 A GUIDE TO 

9. ' ' The inauguration of an extensive plan of develop- 
ment." 

10. ''An extensive campaign of development has been 
inaugurated. ' ' 

11. "Ore shipments have been inaugurated." 

12. "Work on a 50-ton mill is to be inaugurated in 
September." 

13. "Extensive improvements have been made." 

14. "An extensive mine equipment has been pro- 
vided." 

Both extensive and inaugurate are good words in the 
wrong place. Extensive means extended widely; in No. 
10 it is not misplaced, but in No. 9, 13, and 14 'elaborate' 
is meant. In No. 13 'big' would probably do, and in No. 
14 'expensive' may be surmised. As to inaugurate, that 
word, like prosecute, is merely grandiose. The President 
is inaugurated, not a "plan of development." In No. 8 
'started' is meant; in No. 9 inauguration should be 'com- 
mencement'; in No. 10, 11, and 12, 'begun' or 'commenced' 
will serve. 

15. "A new tramway is being installed. " It is being 
'erected' or 'built'. 

16. "A large per cent of the mining and milling in- 
stallations are designed by machinerj^ builders." Per cent 
is wrong; it should be used only as a term of precision 
with a number, here it means merely 'portion' or 'propor- 
tion', that is, "A large proportion of the mining and mill- 
ing machinery was designed by manufacturers. " Installa- 
tion is a pretentious word. You install or induct a man 
into office. 

17. "Since the installation of the air-compressor, op- 
erations have been extensively prosecuted." Thorough 



TECHNICAL WRITING 87 

journalese. Installation is out of scale, for a two-drill com- 
pressor has been erected to hasten the work or to increase 
the output of ore. Installation, inaugurate, and prose- 
cute are words that are the stock-in-trade of the boosters 
of 'wild-cats'. 

18. "As soon as the heading has been advanced far 
enough, drifting both east and west is to be inaugurated." 
Here driving is required. You inaugurate a new reign or 
a presidential term, but you do not inaugurate the driving 
of a level or the cooking of an egg. 

19. "In some instances the adoption and encourage- 
ment of the contract system has proved most advanta- 
geous and efficacious." An example of tautology; the 
last two words serve no useful purpose. 

20. "A mine in which the company recently acquired 
extensive interests." Here the objectionable word means 
simply 'large.' It might be expensive, but not extensive, 
for interests (that is, holdings) are not measured by their 
length, but their number or their value. 

21. "The first extensive shipment came from the 425- 
ft. level." 'Important' or 'large' can be substituted. 

22. "In the earlier working of the mines, tunnels of 
considerable length — approximating some twelve miles or 
more — were driven for the drainage of seepage." This 
should read "In the early working of the mines adits of 
great length — twelve miles or more — were driven to drain 
the seepage." 

23. "Limestone of any character in the producing 
sections of the district seem equally prolific. " This should 
be: "The dilferent limestones in the productive areas of 
the district seem to be alike ore-bearing." Prolific is not 
justified. Sections is colloquial. 



88 A GUIDE TO 

24. "As it was a sine qua non that this shaft should be 
sunk 100 ft. within three months." The subject does not 
warrant a Latin phrase, nor does the sense require it. 
The use of Greek or Latin, French or German, where Eng- 
lish suffices, is a mark not of the literate, but of the pseudo- 
literate, man. The sentence can be improved by saying 
either that it was necessary or a condition of the contract 
that the shaft should be sunk as stated. 

25. "It is a foregone conclusion that had it been pos- 
sible to build a mill, a large amount of low-grade ore, car- 
rying more or less value, would have undergone a method 
of treatment, rather than be thrown over the dump." 
Sloppy writing. If it had no value, it would not be ore ; 
the more or less is only the pretense of accuracy. An ore 
does not undergo a method, it undergoes a treatment. The 
sentence may be amended thus: "It is certain that if it 
had been possible to build a mill, a large amount of low- 
grade ore would have been treated, instead of being 
thrown over the dump." 

26. "The ores of the Bully Hill district contain much 
higher values in gold and silver." The writer means, and 
he ought to say, that: "The ores, etc., are richer in gold 
and silver." 

27. "A six inch streak of ore is exposed that carries 
values from assay tests varying from 1000 to 1500 ozs. in 
silver to the ton." This is as full of errors as a water- 
melon is of pips. Hyphens are needed between six and 
inch, also between assay and tests. This streak of ore car- 
ries neither values nor algebraic formulae, but metals ; in 
this case, silver. The plural of the abbreviation oz. is in- 
excusable. The sentence may be amended thus : "A six- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 89 

inch streak of ore is exposed, carrying from 1000 to 1500 
oz. silver per ton, as determined by assay-tests." 

Some of the Worst. — Here is one describing the opera- 
tion of a machine-drill : 

'^Following the shooting, the mucker begins his work, 
the drill man climbs to the top of the muck, and by the 
time the four feet of ground shot down is mucked out, 
he is again ready to shoot his round of holes." Muck, 
muck, muck — it is the very muck of writing. The word 
means filth or manure. It became used as a synonym for 
dirt, the miner 's term for broken rock. Thus muck refers 
to the shattered rock resulting from blasting ; it is not in 
the least filthy. Shovelers, that is, those who shovel the 
broken rock into the car at the face of a level or cross-cut, 
are now called muckers. What gain is there here ? Shov- 
eler is significant, mucker is the rubbish of words. 

The next example comes from a description of the 
small locomotives used in mines. It reads : 

''Face gathering, wherein the locomotive must enter 
the room, imposes conditions which call for distinctly 
special treatment in the design and equipment of a loco- 
motive of high efficiency. The ordinary haulage locomo- 
tive in nearly all cases is totally unfitted to this work, 
which involves operation in narrow quarters, around sharp 
curves, over poorly laid tracks, etc. The locomotive of real 
value in room work is one which, by reason of proportions 
and construction, will go wherever a mine car will run, 
and with equal facility. It must be compact, no wider 
than the wheels, with short wheel-base and small wheels, 
and without long overhang at either end." 

This is the sort of thing that makes a technical descrip- 
tion seem like a cryptogram or a slab of picture-writing 



90 A GUIDE TO 

from Nineveh. To any one versed in the subject of loco- 
motives for underground use, this paragraph is intelli- 
gible, but only that. It succeeds in making the subject as 
uninteresting as possible and the meaning as much be- 
neath the surface as the locomotive itself. 

Both of these examples come from 'write-ups', the trade 
name for a eulogistic description of a manufactured arti- 
cle, prepared in the interest of the manufacturer and writ- 
ten by a man more accustomed to the use of a screw- 
driver than a pen. The worst writing concerning tech- 
nical matters is to be found in such disguised advertise- 
ments. They ought to be attractively written, to serve 
their purpose; failing to do so, they illustrate the essen- 
tial inefficiency of bad writing. 

Similarly: ''The Union Leasing Company has encoun- 
tered a promising vein 10 ft. north of the shaft." You 
can, if you are not unsympathetic, visualize the episode 
and, with the eyes of the mind, you will see the company 
going forth to meet a promising vein, and shaking hands 
with it at a place 10 ft. north of the shaft. 

Exploitation and exploration are often confused. Ex- 
ploit means to put to use; explore means to search. Ex- 
ploitation refers to the extraction and utilization of ore; 
exploration refers to the work involved in looking for 
more ore. Thus (speaking of faults) : ''In certain cases, 
by judicious exploitation, the veins have been recovered 
and production continued." Obviously, exploration is 
meant. 

"The exploration of the mine has yielded a large out- 
put of excellent ore." While ore is broken in the course 
of exploratory work, it is fairly certain that exploitation 
is intended in this case. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 91 

''It is quite clear from local information that the man- 
ager has gathered that large bodies of ore will be found." 
Probably it was no clearer than the construction of the 
sentence. The relative pronoun that and the conjunction 
that are used in a confusing way. Is it "clear, from local 
information, that the manager has concluded that large 
bodies of ore will be found," or is it "clear from local in- 
formation, collected by the manager, that large bodies of 
ore will be found"? We presume the latter to be correct. 

Contemplate is a word dear to the chroniclers of wild- 
cat operations. The promoters of feline finance "contem- 
plate the inauguration of a campaign of production," the 
"installation of a mill," or the "placing of a smelter in 
commission." Thus: "The Granite Mining Co. is contem- 
plating the starting of the pumps." You can almost see 
them; a group of thoughtful men staring at the pumps 
and expecting them to be willed into movement. 

Estate is another word belonging to the jargon of the 
promoter, for it suggests enough of fixed ownership to 
obscure the fact that the property consists of a number of 
unpatented claims, the title to which may be lost by fail- 
ure to do the assessment work. So "the estate of the 
Manhattan Morgan Corporation wnll be actively explored, 
the directors having decided to prosecute a vigorous cam- 
paign of development," which, being interpreted, means 
that they intend to sink a few prospect holes in order to 
have an excuse for selling their heavily watered stock. 
Grandiose language usually indicates flamboyant finance. 



HINTS IN GRAMMAR 

Subjunctive. — In conditional sentences the use of the 
subjunctive mood is correct, but it is dying out so rapidly 
as to make it seem an affectation, except in the case of 
were for was. On the whole, the subjunctive forms are 
best avoided in technical writing, as being unnecessary, 
and dangerous to all save the most practised writers. 

Shall and Will. — The idiomatic use comes so naturally 
to a small minority that they know not how they do it, 
while to the majority misuse is so ingrained that rules are 
ineffective. The directions for the employment of shall 
apply to should; and those referring to will, apply also to 
would.* 

1. When shall and will retain their original meanings 
of command and wish, respectively, they are used in all 
three persons. Thus : 

Thou shalt not steal. 

You should not say such things. 

Whom should he meet but Jones. 

I will have my way. 

I would not have it done for the world. 

A coat will last two years with care. 

2. In plain statements as to the future, the first person 
has shall, while the second and third persons have will. 
Thus: 

I shall, you will, die some day. 

Shall I, will they, be here tomorrow ? 

We should, he would, have consented if asked. 

*These rules are taken, with most of the illustrations, from 
'The King's English.* Clarendon Press, 1906. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 93 

I should, you would, like to go. 

3. In future and conditional statements that include 
an expression of the speaker's wish, intention, menace, 
assurance, consent, refusal, promise, and so forth, the first 
person has will, while the second and third persons have 
shall. Thus: 

I will tell you presently. 

You shall repent it before long. 

He shall not have any of it. 

We would go if we could. 

They should have had it if they had asked. 

I will drown and no one shall save me. 

There are other rules, with their exceptions, but for 
technical writers these three will suffice. The second rule 
is the one oftenest broken, without excuse. 

The Possessive Case. — This is used excessively, and in 
cases where the preposition of is desirable. Thus: "The 
ore has been compared to a nut struck by a hammer 
whose blow has separated the valueless shell (the quartz) 
from the valuable kernel (the gold)." Whose is the pos- 
sessive case of who ; which is not inflected and it is as the 
possessive of which that whose is employed in this case. 
In poetry and by a personification of the thing mentioned, 
it becomes proper to use whose. Thus: ''The city whose 
towers he saw in the distance." In the example quoted 
above, "hammer" is not used in any personal or poetic 
sense, and it should read: "A hammer the blow of which 
has separated, etc." If this sounds queer, re- write the 
sentence and avoid the dilemma. 

Similarly, its is often used where of it would be better. 
Thus: "The mine is valuable and its development will 
furnish scope for an able man." It is more correct to say, 



94 A GUIDE TO 

''and the development of it will furnish scope," for the 
mine does not possess a development, that engineering re- 
sult being a consequence of operations performed. 

"Clever chemists invent processes whose success hinges 
on their application in practice." This can be improved 
thus: "Clever chemists invent processes the success of 
which hinges on the application of them in practice." 

It may be a matter of taste, or the Avant of it ; those 
that doubt the advantage of using the preposition in place 
of the possessive (of them, of it, of him, etc., in place of 
their, its, his, etc.) should read Ruskin. But apart from 
literary form, with which the technical writer is supposed 
to have no concern, it is a fact that the careful use of 
grammatical inflections will enable him to express himself 
more clearly, and that is the whole purpose of the present 
criticism. For it can readily be retorted that Ruskin mixes 
his which and that in order not to interfere with the mar- 
velous assonance of his writing and to preserve a euphony 
characteristic of a prose style that is finer than poetry, but 
the technical writer, whom we have in view, aims simply 
to make his meaning clear, that is, to convey his ideas on 
practical subjects with the minimum of ambiguity. In 
poetry, ambiguity may add a charm ; in technology, it is a 
nuisance only. Therefore, keep in mind the rules of gram- 
mar, and when the application of them produces a result 
that is not euphonious or gives a sentence of doubtful 
meaning, you will know that it needs re-arrangement. In 
most cases you will find that grammar has been respected 
at the expense of idiom, or both at the cost of lucidity. 
Make everything subserve the purpose of your writing, 
that is, to be understood beyond peradventure. 

The use of a singular verb with a plural noun is a locu- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 95 

tion that bothers many people. It is correct to say that 
''500 tons of ore is treated daily," because ''500 tons of 
ore" is an aggregate and performs the function of a col- 
lective noun. The idea is of a quantity of ore as a whole, 
all of which is treated in a continuous operation. But it 
is proper to say: "Five tons of ore were tested in lots of 
one ton each with different cyanide solutions so as to as- 
certain what strength of solution would give the highest 
extraction." Here the idea is of five different entities, 
each of which was treated by itself. So we say : 

"A hundred tons of ore is shipped to the smelter, while 
350 tons is milled at the mine." 

To many this locution is offensive because it appears 
illogical ; then avoid it by using a different phrasing. 



Many clumsy sentences and awkward locutions may be 
avoided by a little restraint in the use of prepositions; 
they are often only meaningless little obstacles interjected 
into the flow of speech. 



MINOR MATTERS 

Punctuation. — This is a subject fitter for a chapter than 
a paragraph, but the limits of this little essay will not per- 
mit of an exhaustive treatment. The aim of punctuation 
is to indicate the manner in which the writing is to be 
read; it ''does for the eye what vocal stress does for the 
ear." Barrett Wendell summarizes the uses of the four 
principal marks of punctuation thus: "The period is the 
strongest mark of punctuation ; it marks the limits of sen- 
tences. The next strongest mark is the colon; weaker, 
but still stronger than the comma, is the semi-colon ; weak- 
est and most frequent of all is the comma."* Herbert 
Spencer adopted the plan of placing actual spaces be- 
tween the groups of sentences dealing with the separate 
ideas expressed in a single paragraph. Undoubtedly we 
could mark the varying duration of vocal pause between 
words, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs by blank spaces 
of graduated length, but punctuation marks are deemed 
the more effective way of doing so. 

Abrupt change of thought and opposition of ideas is 
indicated by the dash, which is overworked by amateurs. 
The colon suggests a sequel ; it serves to introduce a spe- 
cific statement. It used to be employed to indicate conse- 
quential statements: those prompted by the thought pre- 
ceding; but for such a purpose it has become customary 
to adopt the semicolon. The latter is now a misnomer, for 
it is not a half-colon, rather, it is what it resembles, namely, 
a compromise between the period and comma, the two 

*'English Composition.' Page 83. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 97 

marks of which it is built. The interrogation point (?) 
and the exclamation ( !) are used but little in modern writ- 
ing, being deemed affected, for ideas of doubt and as- 
tonishment are expressed more incisively by words than 
by punctuation. 

The comma is needed before the last member of an 
enumeration that includes three or more. Thus from 
''Dick, Tom and Harry arrived today," it might be in- 
ferred that Tom and Harry arrived in company, and that 
Dick came by himself. To take an example from technical 
writing: "This card system divides itself into several 
parts, namely, correspondence, technical information, cata- 
logues and miscellaneous." This means that there are 
three subdivisions, one of which is ''catalogues and mis- 
cellaneous"; if, however, a comma precedes the and, the 
sentence will mean (as intended) that there are four sub- 
divisions, as stated. Also the sentence, "He left a wife, 
son and daughter." The son and daughter become Siam- 
ese twins. 

The utility of this function of the comma is seen in the 
following example: "To obviate excessive expense for 
power, stoping and hoisting must be done in the day- 
time." Here "stoping and hoisting" are purposely joined 
in opposition to "power," as would not be the case, for 
example, if a writer were in the habit of saying, incor- 
rectly, that "power, stoping and hoisting are three im- 
portant items of expense." The example quoted at the 
beginning of this paragraph cannot be misunderstood by 
those accustomed to write "power, stoping, and hoisting 
are three items of expense," using a comma before the 
and, to mark the grouping. 



98 A GUIDE TO 

The double quotation mark " " should be used only 
to indicate matter actually quoted from a speaker or a 
writer. The single quotation mark ' ' should be used 
in giving titles of books or articles, as Bosqui's * Cyanide 
Practice.' ''Weed read a paper entitled 'Secondary En- 
richment of Ore Deposits'." Use the single quotation also 
for special or local technical terms, as 'mundic,' 'gusher,' 
'fossick,' 'mucker,' 'black jack.' The single quote is apolo- 
getic and indicates words not yet accepted in good usage, 
such as 'graft', 'wild-cat', 'shyster', 'duffer', 'rebater. ' 

Carboniferous is the name of a geological period, which 
in England (where the term originated) was identified 
with the formation of coal, but the coal measures of other 
countries belong to different geological periods, such as 
the Cretaceous and Tertiary. Carbonaceous means con- 
taining or yielding carbon. Some writers use 'carbonif- 
erous' when they mean 'carbon-bearing' and this makes 
confusion with Carboniferous; for instance, in Missouri 
there is a Carboniferous limestone that is carbonaceous. 
Thus: "The mineral solutions came in contact with the 
carbonaceous material of the lower Coal Measures or some 
other precipitating agency." Give words their special 
duties and so strengthen their significance. Let Carbon- 
iferous stand for the name of the formation, and carbon- 
aceous refer to richness in carbon. 

Region refers to a large territory of ill defined extent ; 
district is applied to a defined and relatively small area. 
Thus: "The Silverton district is one of the most produc- 
tive in the San Juan region of Colorado." "The Ward- 
ner district is part of the Coeur d'Alene region of Idaho." 
"The zinc and lead mining region of southwestern Mis- 



TECHNICAL WRITING 99 

souri includes the Joplin, Webb City, Carterville, Oronogo, 
Galena, and Baxter Springs districts." ''In the Rocky 
Mountain region the principal mining centres are at a 
high altitude, as, for instance, the Leadville district, which 
is two miles above sea-level." 

Camp is often used as a synonym for district, but it be- 
comes a misnomer when once a mining settlement has 
passed out of its tented or temporary stage of growth. 
Field is employed by Englishmen much as camp is used 
by Americans. "The goldfields of Australia are south of 
the equator." "On this (the Eand) field white labor is 
at a discount." "The zinc field of Missouri is prosper- 
ous." "The coalfields of West Virginia." 

By compounding, the bucolic suggestiveness of 'field' 
is lessened, so that we employ 'coalfield' and 'goldfield' 
without a sense of incongruity. Compare 'battlefield.' 
But as mines are usually in the mountains or on the des- 
ert, the use of field may well be avoided as being with- 
out significance, if not misleading. We have region, ter- 
ritory, tract, area, district, belt. Let the farmer have his 
field and the soldier his camp; the miner has words enough 
for his own purpose. 

The word balance is used too often as the equivalent of 
remainder. Thus: "The flume has been re-built for a 
greater part of its length and the balance will be thor- 
oughly repaired." Balance suggests equalization, an 
effort to produce equilibrium or to keep in due propor- 
tion. Here it means the remainder or smaller part of the 
flume. There is no suggestion of poise or adjustment. 

Latinity. — Elsew^here I have attacked the employment 
of words of Latin origin when plain English will serve 



100 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

the purpose. The excessive use of long technical terms 
is becoming less common as it is realized that they are 
often unnecessary, besides being ugly and pretentious. 
We leave them nowadays to the charlatan. Yet some 
good men err that way, thus: ''The mineral is non-cuprif- 
erous and auriferous." This was written by a quiet 
thoughtful writer usually free from pyrotechnics. Is it 
not better to say that ''the mineral contains gold but not 
copper." 

In their effort to splurge, some writers use silicious 
when they mean carrying quartz, w^hich is a particular 
form of silica; they use metasomatic until it becomes 
only a wordy cloud ; and when they say calcareous, it is 
uncertain whether they refer to the presence of aragonite, 
calcite, or limestone, or merely a composition that in- 
cludes calcium oxide. They use a long word that is com- 
prehensive but indefinite in place of a short word that is 
less pompous but more definite. Such writers use data and 
strata as if they were singular nouns — a lapse to be debited 
occasionally against university graduates ! 



SPECIFICATIONS 

In preparing manuscript, write on one side of the 
paper only and use sheets of uniform size. Use the type- 
writer, if convenient. If written by hand, print all proper 
names carefully. Allow space between lines so that cor- 
rections can be made without crowding. A foot-note 
should be written in the manuscript immediately under 
the place to which it refers, and a line should be drawn 
across the page both above and below it. Foot-notes 
should be carefully given. An asterisk or other sign may 
serve to correlate one or two notes, but when many foot- 
notes are necessary it is best to number them, thus : 

^R. A. F. Penrose, 'Tin Deposits of the Malay Penin- 
sula'; Trans. A. I. M. E., Vol. XX, pp. 64 to 92. 

^Journal Amer. Soc. Nav. Eng., Vol. II, Pt. 3, p. 17. 

In referring to authors or the names of persons, give 
the initials. Exercise care in this detail. Any man has a 
right to be annoyed if his name is spelled wrongly, for it 
is the one thing that is peculiarly his own. 

In tabulated statements, the head of a column should 
end with a period. Headings should be uniform as re- 
gards abbreviation. Single words or the first of the sev- 
eral words in a description should begin with a capital. 

Time by the clock may be written thus : 5 : 40. 

Write January 14, not 14th of January. 

Instead of 8 in. to 10 in., write 8 to 10 in. ; and instead 
of 30° to 40°, say 30 to 40°. 

Capitalize the names of geologic formations and peri- 
ods: Carboniferous rocks, Red Beds of the Trias, Ter- 
tiary period. 



102 A GUIDE TO 

Points of the compass ordinarily are not capitalized, 
except when they refer to a region, as "conditions in the 
South," "business in the West." This applies also to 
their derivatives eastern, western, etc., as "in western 
Colorado," "in southern California"; but "on the East- 
ern seaboard," "according to Western methods." 

Always capitalize State when it refers to a State of the 
Union (America) or of the Commonwealth (Australia) ; 
thus "a state of uncertainty" or "a state of inebriety," 
but "the State of Montana," "the State of New South 
Wales," and "the State of Sonora." This rule applies to 
Territory also, as "the Territory of Alaska." 

Capitalize Federal when it refers to the Government, 
also Empire, Government, Nation, and Republic when 
they are employed specifically, as: "The resources of the 
Government," "the future of the Nation," "the wealth 
of the southern Republic"; but "the republic of letters." 

Proper names that have become trade terms are not 
capitalized. For instance, Bessemer is capitalized only 
as the name of a man or a town; we speak of bessemer 
steel, bessemer process. The same rule holds good in 
Portland cement, plaster of paris, german silver, muntz 
metal, babbitt metal, china clay. 

In geographical names the capital is not required for 
the last member except when important, thus, we have 
Hudson river but Atlantic Ocean ; Delaware bay, but 
Rocky Mountains. County, lake, valley, basin, and river 
should not be capitalized, but it is proper to write Coast 
range, Great Basin, Front range, Great Lakes. 

Where the name of a company is not given in full, use 
a lower case c, as : The Smith compan}^ the North Pacific 
company. When given in full, a capital C is required. 



TECHNICAL WRITING 



103 



thus : The Smith Smelting & Mining Co., the North Pa- 
cific Railroad Company. Also write 'the Company' when 
referring to a particular company, the full name of which 
has been previously given. 

Employ italics to signify foreign words : "The property 
covered 32 pertenencias.'" "The oficinas in Chile." "It 
was a case of sauve qui peut.''^ Names of ships, newspa- 
pers, and periodicals go in italics: "The Baltic sailed 
today." ''The Times states." "You will see it in the last 
North American Review. ' ' 

Preventive not preventative 

Supposititious ' ' suppositious 

Partly ' ' partially, when meaning in part 

Reagent ' ' re-agent 

Reinforce " re-enforce 

Farther ' ' further, in speaking of distance 

Delimit ' ' deliminate 

Persistent " permanent, as applied to ore 

Except ' ' excepting 

Unwater a shaft but dewater a pulp. 

As far as is applied to undoubted facts, thus : "He 
went as far as Denver." 

So far as is used before clauses containing a statement 
of doubt or varying fact, thus : "So far as known the ore 
is easy to treat by cyanidation. ' ' 

Avoid the use of words that are not English. 
Thus it is better not to write e.g. but for example 



" " " viz. 


' ' namely 


" " " i.e. 


" that is 


" " " via 


' ' by way of 


" " " vice versa 


' ' the reverse 


" " " in situ 


" in place 



104 A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING 

In choosing between the use of the terminations ic and 
ical, as in geologic and geological, it is well to adopt the 
practice of restricting the first to natural phenomena, re- 
lations, conditions, and products, while the second is used 
in designating the works of man, as in research, literature, 
speculation. So that we get : 

Geologic formation Geological survey 

. Geologic structure Geological map 

Electric energy Electrical machine 

Geographic conditions Geographical bulletin 

The following are correct: 
Acquiesce in Disagree v/ith 

Adapted to . Favorable to 

Averse to In view of 

Compare with Necessary to 

Consist in gives a definition Necessity for 
Consist of gives a composi- Need of 

sition. Oblivious of 

Content with Tamper with 

Contrast with Tinker at 

Differ from Vary from 

Different from With a view to 

Use upward, dov/nward, toward, omitting the unneces- 
sary s, as in upwards. 

In speaking of the strike of veins, it is not necessary 
to give the complementary point of the compass. Thus: 
''The lode strikes northwest," not 'northwest-southeast.' 
The 'southeast' is an obvious inference. 



THINGS TO AVOID 

Do not begin a paragraph with a present participle, 
lest you flounder ere the close. 

Reject pristine, erstwhile, and festive. They mark the 
last stage of journalistic vulgarity. 

Speak not of the Phoenix and his ashes, nor of the 
Augean stables, nor of a pilgrimage to Mecca, nor of the 
labors of Hercules, for such allusions have been worn 
threadbare long ago. 

Avoid dashes and parentheses, which to the reader are 
as hurdles to a weary runner. 

Abstain from italics ; let your statements be emphatic 
without them. Italics, like the underlining in a school- 
girl's letter, are apt to be over-worked. Reserve them for 
special occasions. 



GOOD AND BAD WRITING 

It is evident that most writers try to economize the 
mental effort of the writer, not the reader. Bad writing 
is generally due to sheer laziness, simply mental and 
physical sloth. It is easier to be verbose than to be terse ; 
it is less trouble to write than to think. A writer who is 
explicit has taken trouble ; the man who is vague assumes 
that the reader ''will know what I mean." But he won't. 
Hence much trouble. Poor writing calls forth bad lan- 
guage. 

Huxley said that the ars artium, the greatest of all arts, 
was to be able to say: "I do not know." To distinguish 
between what we know and what we think we know is the 
beginning of knowledge. This applies to writing. The 
worst performances in print are made by the men who 
mix fact with fancy, their knowledge with their ignorance, 
the things they apprehend with the things they suppose, 
the crystal and the cloud, neither clear water nor solid 
land, but a morass into which the farther you go the worse 
your plight. 

To young writers it is well to say : Separate what you 
know at first hand about your subject from what you have 
learned at second hand, hold the fact distinct from the 
theory, not that the one is necessarily better than the other, 
but they thrive best when kept apart. Barrett Wendell 
says truly: "To be clear in narrative, or in exposition, or 
in argument, or in any kind of discourse whatever, we 
must evidently proceed from what is known to what is 
unknown." And the method, being logical, is also that 
followed naturally by the reader, whose mental processes 



108 A GUIDE TO 

reflect the activities within the writer's brain — and the 
more of it the writer gives to his work, the less the reader 
will have to contribute. 

Unpractised writers usually begin an article w4th one 
or two paragraphs of valueless generalization, mere wordi- 
ness preparatory to an explicit statement, like the tuning 
of violins before a symphony. The musician cannot help 
it because the strings of his instrument will not stay taut ; 
they must be tightened to preserve the pitch of the violin. 
The writer, on the contrary, even if he goes through a 
preliminary tuning with his pen, need not inflict his 
reader with the result of such clumsy flourishes; he can 
delete, and start at the real beginning of his literary ef- 
fort. And when it is over, there is no need to mask his 
retreat, like a cuttle-fish, with an inky discoloration of 
the clear waters of thought. Those who begin w^ith unnec- 
essary tunings are apt to end with gratuitous discords, a 
wordy introduction is apt to be balanced with a verbose 
conclusion. Spare your reader both, get to the heart of 
your subject without loss of his mental energy, and when 
you have said what you want to say, stop — neither 
abruptly nor diffusely, but in a frank and friendly fashion 
that is as polite as it is prompt. 

In preparing to write on any subject, it is well to turn 
it over in the mind, and then to make a list of headings, 
which stand for separate ideas. If these are put on cards 
or slips of paper, they can be arranged and re-arranged 
until the sequence appears logical; if logical, it will be 
expressive, that is, effective from the reader's point of 
view. In the course of selecting and shifting the head- 
ings, new thoughts will be suggested and the whole matter 
is put into shape. For the act of writing precipitates 



TECHNICAL WRITING 109 

thought, transforming amorphous ruminations into crys- 
talline ideas. 

Barrett Wendell has said eloquently that "whatever 
our subject-matter, our task is to translate the evanescent 
immaterial realities of thought and emotion into written 
words. No matter hoAv humble our task may seem, we are 
really performing, well or ill, an act of creative imagina- 
tion." Hence the pleasure of the writer who knows that 
he has, in some sort, transferred to paper the thought that 
was vibrant in his mind ; it is like the delight of the musi- 
cian who strikes a true chord and feels the reverberations 
tingle through every pulse. At best, written language is 
clumsy ; it lacks the tones and undertones, the expression 
and gesture, of the spoken word. Most writing stands for 
but a fraction of the thought that brought it into being; 
by the time the words have impinged upon the sight and 
intelligence of the reader, a large part of the warm life 
that they had when uttered by the writer has shriveled 
and grown cold. Only now and then does a man arise, 
like Huxley or Ruskin, w4th such a mastery of the pen as 
to transform the immaterial thought into sculptured 
writing that glows with vivid life, like the tinted marbles 
of the Greeks ; then indeed does man rise in proud superi- 
ority over the dumb brutes, for the constructive imagina- 
tion enables him to use the clumsy symbols of his speech 
and from them elaborate a vehicle of thought by which 
the experiences and sensations of a fleeting today are 
transmitted to his descendants in a distant tomorrow. 
Mortal, he becomes immortal ; created, he becomes a 
creator. 



PARTING ADVICE 

i. Have something to say; then say it. 

2. When uncertain as to your grammar or phrasing, 
re-write the sentence or paragraph. 

3. But do not tinker at a doubtful sentence ; re-con- 
struct it thoroughly. 

4. Avoid the use of words the meaning of which is 
doubtful to you. 

5. Make your meaning clear ; then consider style. 

6. Remember the reader. 



A PLEA FOR GREATER SIMPLICITY IN THE 
LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE 

^Scientific ideas are with difficulty soluble in human 
speech. Man, in his contemplation of the flux of phe- 
nomena at work all about him, is embarrassed by the want 
of a vehicle of thought adequate for expression, as a child 
whose stammering accents do not permit him to tell his 
mother the new ideas which suddenly crowd upon him 
when he meets with something alien to his experience. 

Our knowledge of the mechanism of nature has been 
undergoing a process of growth, much of which has been 
sudden. It is not surprising, therefore, that the incom- 
pletely formed ideas of science should become translated 
into clumsy language and that inexact thinking should 
be manifested by vagueness of expression. This inexact- 
ness is often veiled by the liberal use of sonorous Greek 
and Latin words. 

The growth of knowledge has required an increase in 
the medium of intellectual exchange. New conceptions 
have called for new terms. Sir Courtenay Boyle has 
pointed out that the purity of a nation's coinage is prop- 
erly safeguarded, while the verbal coinage of its national 
language is subject to no control. Specially qualified 
persons prepare the standards of gold and silver. This 
insures the absolute purity of the measures of commercial 
exchange and gives the English sovereign and the Amer- 
ican gold-piece, for example, an assured circulation along 

*A paper read before Section E of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, at Denver, on August 28, 1901. 



112 A PLEA FOR 

all the avenues of commerce. It is not so with the stand- 
ards of speech. The nation debases its language with 
slang, with hybrid and foreign words, the impure alloys 
and the cheap imports of its verbal coinage, mere tokens 
that should not be legal tender on the intellectual ex- 
changes. France has an academy which in these matters 
has much of the authority given to the Mint, whose assay- 
ers test our metal coins; but in our country the mintage 
of words is wholly unrestricted, and, as a consequence, 
the English language, circulating as it does to all the four 
corners of the globe, has received an admixture of frag- 
ments of speech taken from various languages, just as the 
currency given to the traveler in exchange at the frontier, 
where empires meet, bears the mark of several govern- 
ments and passes with an equally liberal carelessness. 

Science ignores geographical lines and bemoans the 
babel of tongues which hinders the free interchange of 
ideas between all the peoples of the earth. Nevertheless, 
the international character of technical literature is sug- 
gested by the fact that three languages, French, German, 
and English, are practically recognized as the standard 
mediums of intellectual exchange. One of these affords 
the most lucid solvent of thought, another is the speech of 
the most philosophical of European people, and the third 
goes with world-wide dominion, so that each has a claim 
to become the recognized language of science. The broth- 
erhood of thinking men will have been fully recognized 
when all agree to employ the same tongue in their inter- 
course, but such a ''far-off divine event" is not within 
the probabilities of the present, consequently there re- 
mains only for us to make the best of our own particular 
language and to safeguard its purity, so that when it goes 



GREATER SIMPLICITY 113 

abroad the people of other countries may at least be as- 
sured that they are not dealing with the debased coinage 
of speech. 

Barrie has remarked that in this age the man of science 
appears to be the only one who has anything to say — and 
the only one who does not know how to say it. It is far 
other cvise in politics, an occupation that numbers among 
its followers a great many persons who have the ability 
for speaking far beyond anything worth the saying that 
they have to say. Nor is it so in the arts, the high priests 
of w!iich, according to Huxley, have "the power of ex- 
pression so cultivated that their sensual caterwauling may 
be almost mistaken for the music of the spheres." In 
science there is a language as of coded telegrams, by the 
use of which a limited amount of information is conveyed 
through the medium of six-syllabled words. Even when 
not thus overburdened with technical terms it is too often 
the case that scientific conceptions are conveyed in a raw 
and unpalatable form, mere indigestible chunks of knowl- 
edge, as it were, which are apt to provoke mental dyspep- 
sia. Why, I ask, should the standard English prose of the 
day be a chastened art and the writing of science, in a 
great scientific era, merely an unkempt dressing of splen- 
did ideas ? The luminous expositions of Huxley, the occa- 
sional irradiating imagery of Tyndall, the manly speech 
of Le Conte, and of a very few others, all serve simply to 
emphasize the fact that the literature of scientific research 
as a whole is characterized by a flat and ungainly style, 
which renders it distasteful to all but those who have a 
great hunger for learning. 

To criticism of this sort the professional scientist can 
reply that he addresses himself not to the public at large, 



114 A PLEA FOR 

but to those who are themselves engaged in similar re- 
search, and he may be prompted to add to this the further 
statement that he cannot pitch the tone of his teachings 
so as to reach the unsensitive intelligence of persons who 
lack a technical education. Furthermore, he will claim 
that he cannot do without the use of the terms to which 
objection is made. However, in condemning the needless 
employment of bombastic words of classical origin, in 
place of plain English, I do not wish to be understood 
as attacking all technical terms. They are a necessary 
evil. Some of them are instruments of precision invented 
to cover particular scientific ideas. Old words have asso- 
ciations which sometimes unfit them to express new con- 
ceptions and therefore fresh words are coined. The com- 
plaint lodged against the pompous and ungainly wordiness 
of a large part of the scientific writing of the day is that 
it is an obstacle to the spread of knowledge. 

Let us consider the subject as it is thus presented. In 
the first place, does the excessive use of technical terms 
impede the advance of science? I think it does. It kills 
the grace and purity of the literature by means of which 
the discoveries of science are made known. Ruskin, him- 
self a most accurate observer of nature, and also a geolo- 
gist, said that he was stopped from pursuing his studies 
*'by the quite frightful inaccuracy of the scientific peo- 
ple's terms, which is the consequence of their always try- 
ing to write mixed Latin and English, so losing the grace 
of the one and the sense of the other." But grace of dic- 
tion is not needed, it may well be said ; that is true, and it 
is also true that a clear, forceful, unadorned mode of ex- 
pression is more difficult of attainment and more desirable 
in the teaching of science than either grace or fluency of 



GREATER SIMPLICITY 115 

diction. One must not, as Huxley himself remarks, ** var- 
nish the fair face of Truth with that pestilent cosmetic, 
rhetoric," and Huxley most assuredly solved the problem 
of how to avoid rhetorical cosmetics and yet convey deep 
reasoning on the most complex of subjects in addresses 
that are not only as clear as a trout stream, but are also 
brightened by warm touches of humanity, keen wit, and 
the glow of his own courageous manhood. Nevertheless, 
though clearness of expression be the first desired, yet 
grace is not to be scorned. When you have a teaching to 
convey, it is well to employ all the aids that will enable 
you to get a sympathetic hearing. Man lives not by bread 
alone, much less by stones. He likes his mental food gar- 
nished with a sauce. Let the cooking be good, of course, 
but a chef knows the value of a garniture. 

Our language is capable of a grace and a finish greater 
than we give it credit. That it is possible to write on ge- 
ology, for instance, in the most exquisitely simple English 
has been proved by Ruskin, whose 'Deucalion' and 'Mod- 
ern Painters' contain many pages describing accurately 
the details of the structure of rocks and mountains, and 
dealing with their geological features in language marked 
by the most sparing use of words that have not an Anglo- 
Saxon origin. 

The next aspect of the enquiry is whether the language 
of science, apart from the view of mere grace of style in 
literature, is not likely, in its present every-day form, to 
delay the advance of knowledge by its very obscurity. 
Leaving the reader's feelings out of the argument, for the 
present, it seems obvious that the whole purpose of science, 
namely, the search after truth, which is best advanced by 
accuracy of observation and exactness of statement, is 



116 A PLEA FOR 

hindered by a phraseology that sometimes means very 
much but often means very little, and, on the whole, is 
most serviceable when required as a cloak for ignorance. 
To distinguish between what we know and what we think 
we know, to comprehend accurately the little that we do 
know, surely these are the foundations of scientific prog- 
ress. If a man knows what a thing really is, he can say 
so, describing it, for example, as being black or white ; if 
he does not know, he masks his ignorance by stating in a 
few Greek or Latin terms that it partakes of the general 
quality of grayness. Writers get into the habit of using 
words that they do not clearly understand themselves 
and that, as a consequence, must fail in conveying an 
exact meaning to their readers. Many persons who pos- 
sess only the smattering of a subject are apt to splash all 
over it with words of learned sound, which are more 
quickly acquired, of course, than the reality of knowledge. 
Huxley said that if a man does really know his subject 
*'he will be able to speak of it in an easy language and 
with the completeness of conviction with which he talks 
of an ordinary every-day matter. If he does not, he will 
be afraid to wander beyond the limits of the technical 
phraseology which he has got up. ' ' If any scientific writer 
should complain that simplicity of speech is impracticable 
in dealing with essentially technical subjects, I refer him 
to the course of lectures delivered by Huxley to working- 
men, lectures which conveyed original investigations of 
the greatest importance, in language that was as easily 
understood by his audience as it was accurate when re- 
garded from a purely professional standpoint. 

Science has been well defined as ^'organized common 
sense" ; let us then express its findings in something better 



GREATER SIMPLICITY 117 

than a mere jargon of speech and avoid that stupidity 
which Samuel Johnson, himself an arch-sinner in this re- 
spect, has fitly described as ''the immense pomposity of 
sesquipedalian verbiage." George Meredith, a great mint- 
master of words, has recorded his objection to "convers- 
ing in tokens not standard coin." Indeed the clumsy Lat- 
inity of much of our scientific talk is an inheritance from 
the schoolmen of the past ; it is the degraded currency of a 
period when the vagaries of astrology and alchemy found 
favor among intelligent men. 

Vagueness of language produces looseness of knowl- 
edge in the teacher as well as the pupil. Huxley, in re- 
ferring to the use of such comprehensive terms as 'develop- 
ment' and 'evolution,' remarked that words like these 
were mere "noise and smoke," the important thing being 
to have a clear conception of the idea signified by the 
name. Examples of this form of error are easy to find. 
The word 'dynamic' has a distinct meaning in physics, but 
it is ordinarily employed in the loosest possible manner in 
geological literature. Thus, the origin of a perplexing ore 
deposit was recently imputed to the effects produced by 
the "dynamic power" that had shattered a certain moun- 
tain. 'Dynamic' is of Greek derivation and means power- 
ful, therefore a 'powerful power' had done this thing; but 
in physics the word is used in the sense of active, as op- 
posed to 'static' or stationary, and it implies motion re- 
sulting from the application of force. In the case quoted, 
and in many similar instances, the word 'agency' or 'ac- 
tivity ' would serve to interpret the hazy idea of the writer, 
and there is every reason to infer, from the context, that 
he substituted the term 'dynamic power' merely as a frip- 
pery of speech. It is much easier to talk grandiloquently 



118 A PLEA FOR 

about a 'dynamic power,' which perpetrates unutterable 
things and reconstructs creation in the twinkling of an 
eye, than it is to make a careful study of a region, trace 
its structural lines, and decipher the relations of a compli- 
cated series of faults. When this has been done and a 
writer uses comprehensive words to summarize activities 
that he has expressly defined and described, then in- 
deed he has given a meaning to such words and he has a 
right to use them. 

In this connection it is amusing to remember how Rus- 
kin attacked Tyndall for a similar indiscretion. The lat- 
ter had referred to a certain theory, which was in debate, 
and had said that it, and the like of it, was ''a dynamic 
power which operates against intellectual stagnation.'' 
Ruskin commented thus: *'How a dynamic power differs 
from an undynamic one, and, presumably, also, a potesta- 
tic dynamis from an unpotestatic one — and how much 
more scientific it is to say, instead of — that our spoon 
stirs our porridge — that it 'operates against the stagna- 
tion of our porridge. ' Professor Tyndall trusts the reader 
to recognize with admiration." 

Among geological names there is that comfortable word 
'metasomatosis' and its offspring of 'metasomatic inter- 
change,' 'metasomatic action,' 'metasomatic origin,' etc., 
etc. To a few who employ the term to express a particular 
manner in which rocks undergo change, it is a convenient 
word for a definite idea, but for the greater number of 
writers on geological subjects it is a wordy cloud, a neb- 
ular phrase, which politely covers the haziness of their 
knowledge concerning a certain phenomenon. When you 
don't know what a thing is, call it a 'phenomenon'! 

Instances of mere vulgarity of scientific language are 



GREATER SIMPLICITY 119 

too numerous to mention. 'Auriferous' and 'argentifer- 
ous' are ugly words. They are unnecessary ones also. The 
other day a metallurgical specialist spoke of 'auriferous 
amalgamation' as though any process in which mercury 
is used could be gold-bearing unless it were part of the 
program that somebody should add particles of gold to the 
ore under treatment. A mining engineer, of the kind 
known to the press as an expert, described a famous lode 
as traversing "on the one hand a feldspathic tufaceous 
rock" and "on the other hand a metamorphic matrix of 
a somewhat argillo-arenaceous composition." This is sci- 
entific nonsense, the mere travesty of speech. To those 
who care to dissect the terms used it is easily seen that 
the writer of them could make nothing out of the rocks 
he had examined save the fact that they were decomposed, 
and the rock which he described last might have been 
almost anything, for all he said of it ; since his description, 
when translated, means literally a changed matter of a 
somewhat clayey-sandy composition, which, in Anglo- 
Saxon is m-u-d! The 'somewhat' is the one useful word in 
the sentence. Such language may be described in the 
terms of mineralogy as metamorphosed English pseudo- 
morphic after blatherumskite. Some years ago, when I 
was at a small mine near Georgetown, in Colorado, a pro- 
fessor visited the underground workings and was taken 
through them. He immediately began to make a display 
of verbal fireworks, which bewildered the foreman and 
the other miners whom he met in the mine — all save one, 
a little Cornishman, who, bringing him a bit of clay that 
accompanied the walls of the lode, said to him, "What 
do 'ee call un, you?" The professor replied, "It is the 
argillaceous remnant of an antediluvian world." Quick 



120 A PLEA FOR 

as a flash came the comment, ''That's just what I told me 
pardner. " He was not deceived by the vapor of words. 

Next consider the position of the reader. It is scarcely- 
necessary at this date to plead for the cause of technical 
education and the generous bestowal of the very best that 
there is of scientific knowledge. The great philosophers 
of that New Reformation which marked the era of the 
publication of 'The Origin of Species' have given most 
freely to all men of their wealth of learning and research. 
When these have given so much we might w^ell be less nig- 
gardly with our small change and cease the practice of 
distributing, not good wholesome intellectual bread, but 
the mere stones of knowledge, the hard fossils of what 
were once stimulating thoughts. In the ancient world the 
Eleusinian mysteries were withheld from the crowd and 
knowledge was the possession of a few. Do the latter day 
priests of science desire to imitate the attendants of the 
old Greek temples and confine their secrets to a few of the 
elect by the use of a formalism which is the mere abraca- 
dabra of speech? Among certain scientific men there is 
a feeling that scientists should address themselves only to 
fellow scientists, and that to become an expositor to the 
unlearned is to lose caste among the learned. It is the 
survival of the narrow spirit of the dark ages, before mod- 
ern science was born. There are not many, however, who 
dare confess to such a creed, although their actions may 
occasionally endorse it. On the whole, modern science is 
nothing if not catholic in its generosity. "To promote the 
increase of natural knowledge and to forward the appli- 
cation of scientific methods of investigation to all the prob- 
lems of life" was the avowed purpose of the greatest of 
the philosophers of the Victorian era. 



GREATER SIMPLICITY 121 

There are those who are full of a similar good-will, but 
they fail in giving effect to it because they are unable to 
use language that can be widely understood. In its very 
infancy geology was nearly choked with big words, for 
Lyell, the father of modern geology, said, seventy years 
ago, that the study of it was "very easy, when put into 
plainer language than scientific writers choose often un- 
necessarily to employ. ' ' At this day even the publications 
of the Geological Surveys of the United States and the 
Australian colonies, for example, are occasionally re- 
stricted in usefulness by erring in this respect, and as I 
yield to none in my appreciation of the splendid service 
done to geology and to mining by these Surveys, I trust 
my criticism will be accepted in the thoroughly friendly 
spirit with which it is offered. It seems to me that one 
might almost say that certain of these extremely valuable 
publications are 'badly' prepared because they seem to 
overlook the fact that they are, of course, intended to aid 
the mining community in the first place, and the public 
whether lay or scientific, only secondarily. From a wide 
experience among those engaged in mining I can testify 
that a large part of the literature thus prepared is useless 
to them, and that no one regrets it more deeply than they, 
because there is a marked tendency among this class of 
workers to appreciate the assistance that science can 
give. Take, for example, a sentence like the following, 
extracted from one of the recent reports of the U. S. Geo- 
logical Survey: ''The ore forms a series of imbricating 
•lenses, or a stringer lead, in the slates, the quartz con- 
forming as a rule to the carunculated schistose structures, 
though occasionally breaking across laminae, and some- 
times the slate is so broken as to form a reticulated de- 



122 A PLEA FOR 

posit." This was written by one of our foremost geolo- 
gists and, when translated, the sentence is found to con- 
vey a useful fact, but is it likely to be clear to anyone but 
a traveling dictionary? A thoroughly literary man might 
know the exact meaning of the two or three very unusual 
words which are employed in this statement, but the ques- 
tion is, will it be of any use whatever even to a fairly edu- 
cated miner, or be understood by those who pay for the 
preparation of such literature, namely, the taxpayers? An 
example of another kind is afforded by a Tasmanian geolo- 
gist who recently described certain ores as due to 'Hhe 
effects of a reduction in temperature of the hitherto lique- 
fied hydroplutonic solutions, and their consequent regular 
precipitation." These solutions, it is further stated, pre- 
sumably for the guidance of those who wield the pick, 
** ascended in the form of metallic superheated vapors 
which combined eventually with ebullient steam to form 
other aqueous solutions, causing geyser-like discharges at 
the surface, aided by subterranean and irrepressible pres- 
sure. ' ' At the same time certain ' ' dynamical forces ' ' were 
very busy indeed and ''eventuated in the opening of fis- 
sures" — of which one can only regret that they did not 
swallow up the author as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram 
were once engulfed in the sight of all Israel. 

It will be well to contrast these two examples of exu- 
berant verbosity because the first befogs the statement of 
a scientific observation of value, made by an able man, 
while the second cloaks the ignorance of a charlatan, who 
masquerades his nonsense in the trappings of wisdom. 
Here you have an illustration of the harmfulness of this 
kind of language, which obscures truth and falseness alike, 
to the degradation of science and the total confusion of 



GREATER SIMPLICITY 123 

those of the unlearned who are searching after informa- 
tion. 

Let the writer on scientific matters learn the derivation 
of the words he uses and then translate them literally into 
English before he uses them, and thereby avoid the uncon- 
scious talking of nonsense. If he knows not the exact 
meaning of the terms that offer themselves to his pen, 
let him avoid them and trust to the honest aid of his own 
language. *' Great part of the supposed scientific knowl- 
edge of the day is simply bad English, and vanishes the 
moment you translate it/' says Ruskin. The examples 
already given will illustrate this. ^' Every Englishman 
has, in his native tongue, an almost perfect instrument of 
literary expression, ' ' so says Huxley, and he illustrates his 
own saying. Huxley and Ruskin were wide apart in many 
things and yet they agreed in this. Ruskin proved abun- 
dantly that the language of Shakespeare and the Bible can 
be used as a weapon of expression keen as a Damascus 
sabre when it is freed from the rust of classic importa- 
tions, which make it clumsy as a crowbar. 

There is yet another reason against the excessive use of 
Greek-English words, in particular. Greece is not a rem- 
nant of extinct geography, but an existing land with an 
active people and a living language. The terms that pale- 
ontology has borrowed from the Greek may be returned 
by the Greeks to us. And, as Ruskin points out, ''What 
you, in compliment to Greece, call a 'Dinotherium,' Greece, 
in compliment to you, must call a ' Nasty-beastium, ' and 
you know the interchange of compliments can't last long. " 

In all seriousness, however, is it too much to ask that 
such technical terms as are considered essential shall not 
be used carelessly, and that in publications intended for 



124 A PLEA FOR 

an untechnical public, as are most government reports, an 
effort be made to avoid them and, where unavoidable, 
those that are least likely to be understood shall be 
translated in foot-notes. Even as regards the transactions 
of scientific societies, I believe that those of us who are 
active members have little to lose and much to gain by 
confining the use of our clumsy terminology to cover ideas 
which we cannot otherwise express. By doing so we shall 
contribute, I earnestly believe, to that advancement of 
science which we all have at heart. 

In furtherance of this principle we must remember that 
language in relation to ideas is a solvent, the purity and 
clearness of which affect what it bears in solution. Whe- 
well, in 'The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,' has 
expressed this view of the matter with noble eloquence. 
"Language," he said, "is often called an instrument of 
thought, but it is also the nutriment of thought ; or rather, 
it is the atmosphere in which thought lives; a medium 
essential to the activitj^ of our speculative powers, al- 
though invisible and imperceptible in its operation, and 
an element modifying, by its qualities and changes, the 
growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds." 

In considering the subject from this standpoint, there 
is borne upon the mind a suggestion that carries our 
thought far beyond the confines of the matter noAV under 
discussion. Such power of speech as man possesses is a 
faculty that appears to divide him from all other living 
things, while at the same time the imperfection of it 
weighs him down continually with the sense of an essential 
frailty. To be able to express oneself perfectly would be 
divine, to be unable to make oneself understood is human. 
In 'Man's Place in Nature,' Huxley points out that the 



GREATER SIMPLICITY 125 

endowment of intelligible speech separates man from the 
brutes which are most like him, namely, the anthropoid 
apes, whom he otherwise resembles closely in substance 
and in structure. This endowment enables him to trans- 
mit the experience which in other animals is lost with each 
individual life ; it has enabled him to organize his knowl- 
edge and to hand it down to his descendants, first by word 
of mouth and then by written words. If the experience 
thus recorded were properly utilized, instead of being 
largely disregarded, then man's advancement in knowl- 
edge and conduct would enable him to emphasize much 
more than it is permitted him at present, his superiority 
over the dumb brutes. Considered from this standpoint, 
language is a factor in the evolution of the race and an in- 
strument that works for ethical progress. It is a gift most 
truly divine, which should be cherished as the ladder that 
has permitted of an ascent from the most humble begin- 
nings and leads to the heights of a loftier destiny, when 
man, ceasing to stammer forth in accents that are but the 
halting expression of swift thought, shall photograph his 
mind in the fulness of speech, and, neither withholding 
what he wants to say nor saying what he wants to with- 
hold, shall be linked to his fellow by the completeness of a 
perfect communion of ideas. 



STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH IN TECHNICAL 
LITERATURE 

*It should not be necessary to apologize for submitting 
the consideration of this subject. Whether my views 
prove acceptable or not, is a small matter; my aim in 
addressing you is to engage your interest in matters not 
alien to the purpose for which this Institution was organ- 
ized — to direct your attention to the intelligent use of 
words in technical writing. Whether you agree with my 
views on the subject is of no vital consequence if only 
by arousing your critical faculty, you may be induced 
to use in a thoughtful way words and phrases that you 
now employ thoughtlessly, or, shall I say, habitually, 
without having taken the trouble to consider the funda- 
mental principles involved. Let us agree to disagree, if 
you will; but let us unite in performing an important 
part of our professional work in a scientific manner, as 
becomes technical men. 

'* Science and Literature are not two things, but two 
sides of one thing." So said Huxley; and he illustrated 
his own saying, until his writings became as glimpses of 
the obvious, and his lectures windows into the infinite. 
We need to be reminded occasionally that science is not 
divorced from literature, and that even technology is not 
compelled to go about as if legally separated from good 
English. As technical men we are always ready to lay 
stress on the necessity for precision, yet when we come 

*A portion of a paper read before the Institution of Mining 
and Metallurgy, at London, on May 26, 1910. 



128 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

to record the observations and conclusions gathered and 
formed during a laborious career we are apt to use the 
first verbal implements at hand, instead of chiseling our 
speech with the tools given to us by the masters of 
language. As well try to cut a statue out of marble with 
a dull adze as express scientific ideas by aid of colloquial 
words, local terms, and vulgar idioms; as well paint a 
sunset with a scrubbing brush. 

The purpose of language is to convey ideas ; the intent 
of technical writing is to transmit accurate information, 
whether as fact or theory, from one man to another, to 
the gain of all. Indeed, the benefit is usually more to 
the giver than to the receiver. In the exchange of ideas, 
it is particularly true that it is more blessed to give than 
to receive. No man learns so much from the writing of 
a book or an article as the author himself. It has been 
well said that if you wish to learn all about a subject, 
write a book on it. At the start the writer finds his 
knowledge as full of holes as a sieve, and his thought as 
turbid as the pulp from a stamp-mill. In the effort to 
convey information by writing he crystallizes the amorph- 
ous ideas collected during years of study and observation, 
he submits the confused notions in his brain to the settling 
process of logical thinking, whereby the true is precip- 
itated from the false, the accurate is decanted from the 
inaccurate, fact is filtered from supposition, and finally 
the solution of speech, pellucid but enriched, is outpoured 
generously. 

The value of such a performance, either to the author 
or to his readers, depends upon the manner of it. There 
be those that write on a subject only helplessly to obscure, 
only hopelessly to obfuscate, only stupidly to mislead. 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 129 

Even men possessing individual experience or exceptional 
knowledge may fail in conveying either the one or the 
other, because they make careless use of the medium em- 
ployed. A notion used to prevail, and still survives, that 
nicety in the use of words is, in a practical man, almost 
effeminate. To some people the effort to write correctly 
is deemed an affectation, as if it were not as essential 
to the comprehension of the long-suffering reader as to 
the understanding of the author himself, whose ideas are 
clarified by using a correct medium of speech. The turbid 
pulp in a mill is made clear by passing through classifiers 
and settlers. Not until a technical man sits down and 
begins honestly to tell what he knows on any given sub- 
ject does he find out how hazy is his information ; and if 
he indulge in vague generalities, careless terms, and in- 
volved idioms he never will render himself or his ideas 
clear, either to himself or to his readers. Thus an in- 
telligent use of the medium of written speech is self- 
discipline, to which every serious worker ought to submit 
himself at regular intervals, as a measure of efficiency and 
a stimulus to betterment. 

Huxley said that Spencer's idea of tragedy was a 
theory killed by a fact; my idea of the tragic is the 
vast amount of useful information that is lost by being 
unrecorded. What enormous quantities of notes, the 
embryonic beginnings of scientific literature, remain un- 
developed and are finally cast into the fire. It may be 
that some of them are better fitted to light the hearth 
than to fire the imagination, but at least I would have 
them sifted and sorted if haply they may contain nuggets 
of information or gems of thought. Every year some 
mining engineer or metallurgist dies leaying a bulky col- 



130 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

lection of notes, useless to anyone but himself, and useless 
at last even to himself; such notes may relate to unique 
observations or individual experience, the record of which 
would be as stepping stones to those that follow. In some 
cases the aim has been to complete the study of a subject 
before rushing into print, as if anything were complete 
in this transitory world. Nothing is more pathetic than 
this expectation of saying the last word on a subject; it 
never will be said ; the best we can do is to contribute our 
little all as a mite to the great legacy of knowledge and 
then hope to merit an epitaph like that of John Richard 
Green: ''He died learning." 

The amount of first-hand information possessed by any 
man is pitiably small; we are all hopelessly in debt to 
others, to our contemporaries, to our forefathers, to the 
race. Yet each man possesses some little bit of knowl- 
edge, whether as observation, theory, or experience, that 
is his very own. Thus each can contribute something to 
the general fund; and seeing how much he owes, it is 
asking but little that he give cheerfully what he can. Of 
course, narrow minds still continue to fondle the mean 
belief that to give information gratuitously is to throw 
away a stock in trade, and that to keep secret the pro- 
fessional or technical experience of a life is to possess an 
added weapon in the arena of industry. But this is a 
pitiable fallacy scarcely worthy of castigation. If adopted 
universally we would be today as the Hottentot or the 
Eskimo ; civilization has been evolved by the free ex- 
change of thought and the frank transmission of expe- 
rience. Whether we be advocates of free trade, fair trade, 
or reciprocity in matters of national industry, let us at 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 131 

least reject the shriveling policy of protection as applied 
to the worldwide traffic in ideas. 

Science is organized common sense ; technology is the 
precise expression of special knowledge. The ordinary 
information of an average man is like a pile of fire-wood, 
disorderly and bulky; the fund of useful information 
possessed by the technical man is like an orderly arrange- 
ment of fuel, in definite lengths, arranged so as to be 
easily measured and readily available. The result is due 
to an intelligent effort; it is not accident. 

''The development of the mind is an advance from 
the indefinite to the definite." The technical man in his 
processes, whether of the mill and smelter, or in the re- 
ducing operations of his mind, follows a similar line of 
progress. His constant effort is to distinguish between 
what he knows and what he thinks he knows, between 
fact and fancy, between observation at first-hand and in- 
formation at second-hand. And when he comes to place 
himself on record he should follow an identical course; 
but with a difference. In his technical operations he 
deals, in the main, with insentient matter; in his tech- 
nical writing he must keep in mind the human element, 
for he is not writing on stones to be placed in a desert 
but on paper to be read by his fellows. To be effective, 
sympathy is needed, as well as knowledge ; otherwise the 
effort will be sterile. Spencer, who studied style as an 
adjunct to philosophy, has said: ''The good instructor 
is one in whom nature or discipline has produced what 
we may call intellectual sympathy — such an insight into 
another's mental state as is needed rightly to adjust the 
sequence of ideas to be communicated." In other words: 
Remember the reader. Every writer may not care to pose 



132 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

as an instructor, but, in effect, every serious writer does 
instruct to useful purpose according as he renders himself 
receptive to the reader by employing words in a con- 
vincing and agreeable manner. ''Those are the most 
effective modes of expression which absorb the smallest 
amount of the recipient's attention in interpreting the 
symbols of thought: leaving the greatest amount for the 
thought itself." So Spencer said. This is the first prin- 
ciple of writing : economy of mental effort. Put yourself 
in the reader's place; if you do, sincerely and honestly, 
you will succeed in avoiding all the grosser errors of style 
and expression that prevent language from becoming pic- 
torial, that hinder the transfer of ideas, and retard the 
transport of thought. 

In technology, as in science generally, the tendency 
exists to employ impressive words as the symbols of vague 
ideas instead of using plain speech to express definite 
notions. Thus we have that comfortable word 'meta- 
morphism', and that weak word 'dynamic'; in economic 
geology the phrase 'secondary enrichment' is often used 
when the phenomena might indicate primary impoverish- 
ment. We use the word 'phenomenon' itself as if it stood 
for something definite; it means an unexplained 'appear- 
ance'; when we do not know what a thing is, we call it 
a 'phenomenon'. Macaulay said: "I have often ob- 
served that a fine Greek compound is an excellent substi- 
tute for a reason." We use sonorous multisyllables like 
"the chunk of Old Red sandstone" that was thrown by 
one of the disputants in the row that disrupted the Society 
on the Stanislaus, as related by Bret Harte. 

Apart from the failure to convey information, the use 
of impressive terms often entails a failure on the part of 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 133 

the writer to understand himself. It is easier to refer to 
a 'phenomenon' than to explain it, to impute to 'meta- 
morphism' the thermal and physical changes that are seen 
as through a glass darkly, and to debit 'secondary enrich- 
ment' with vagaries in ore distribution that elude the 
comprehension of the mining engineer. Here again self- 
discipline should precede the attempt to teach. Permit 
me to quote Samuel Johnson : "To explain, requires the 
use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be ex- 
plained, and such terms cannot always be found. For 
as nothing can be proved but by supposing something 
intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing 
can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit 
of definition." Lest this sententious dictum should in- 
timidate you, I quote another saying of the great lexi- 
cographer: "There is for every thought a certain nice 
adaptation of words which none other could equal, and 
which when a man has been so fortunate as to hit, he 
has attained, in that particular case, the perfection of 
language." 

While objecting to the reckless use of local terms and 
mere vulgarisms I hope to escape the charge of pedantry. 
Of course, it is possible to cramp the use of language by 
too much self-consciousness, by the priggishness of a 
pedagogue, or the pettiness of a pedant. My objection is 
not to the thoughtful use occasionally of local terms, or 
even slang, if thereby the meaning of the writer be made 
clearer, but to the thoughtless and unintelligent adoption 
of corrupt forms of speech. I do not object to the use 
of an unscholarly word or an unfamiliar idiom if either 
of these is adopted deliberately in order to express ideas 
not to be appreciated when clothed in more conventional 



134 STANDARDIZATION OP ENGLISH 

terms; but I do protest against blunders arising from 
mere lack of care and to wilful ignorance of the simplest 
rules regulating the effective employment of language as 
a vehicle of thought. You will remember Macaulay's 
pleasant correspondence with Napier, the editor of The 
Edinburgh Review: Napier had objected to the use of 
phrases that were flippant and of words that were collo- 
quial. Macaulay vindicated himself by referring to the 
practice of Addison, 'Hhe model of pure and graceful 
writing," arguing that a little levity of style was occa- 
sionally desirable as a relief from continued earnestness 
and dignity. He went on to say: ''The first rule of all 
writing — that rule to which every other is subordinate — 
is that the words used by the writer shall be such as most 
fully and precisely convey his meaning to the great body 
of his readers. All considerations about the purity and 
dignity of style ought to bend to this consideration." 
And it is safe to say that Macaulay himself did not find 
it necessary to sacrifice the extraordinary high level of 
his style to the attainment of expression or to lucidity 
of thought. If those who use the wretched vulgarisms 
and careless colloquialisms that disfigure so much tech- 
nical literature can find in Macaulay's plea for flexibility 
any warrant for their sins, they are welcome to the solace, 
but I fail to see any likeness between the intentional 
levity or reasoned laxity of a careful writer and the unin- 
tentional blunders or thoughtless errors of a careless 
scribbler. We do not need to become as self-conscious as 
the centipede of whom it is related that he managed to 
get on well enough until one day he became aware of his 
hundred feet, so that he tripped and fell by the wayside 
in a hopeless tangle ; nor in transferring thought from 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 135 

ourselves to others by means of the vehicle of language 
need we imitate the reckless driver who blunders into 
all the ruts, over all the stones, into all the puddles, and 
ends by taking the wrong turning, so that his load of 
fodder never reaches its intended destination, but is scat- 
tered in a disorderly mess over the roads of half a county. 
The language used in technical writing may be likened 
to the food we eat. One man says that he wants plain 
cooking; that he does not care for highly seasoned dishes ; 
and that rich entrees disgust him. Another has a delicate 
palate and objects to mere chunks of meat and plain boiled 
vegetables; he asks for something daintier and more ap- 
petizing. As a matter of fact, so-called plain food easily 
degenerates into what the American calls 'hash', it may 
be so tasteless and sodden as to be palatable only to a 
hungry man, while on the other hand the rich sauce and 
delicate garniture soon pall to the satiety of toujours 
perdrix. In writing, as in cooking, in the intellectual as 
in the physical nourishment, it is necessary to avoid ex- 
tremes and to keep in mind the purpose of the perform- 
ance. The ideal is good food, well cooked, and judiciously 
seasoned, neither so crude as to be unpalatable nor so 
elaborate as to cloy the taste. Further, in literature as 
in gastronomy, the purveyor of nourishment will recog- 
nize the necessity for adapting his products to the taste 
of those whom he desires to please or to strengthen, vary- 
ing his viands accordingly. Writers that start with the 
idea of naturalness and simplicity of literary manner, are 
apt to deprecate the tricky allurements of the stylist until 
they themselves write uncouthly and may take such pains 
not to be florid as to become merely bucolic. Their coun- 
terpart is the writer who obtains so much enjoyment when 



136 STANDARDIZATION OP ENGLISH 

weaving words as to forget the object in view, and is so 
particular as to the manner as to overlook the matter. 
Both errors of extreme can be cured by paying attention 
to the fundamental rule: Remember the reader. When 
you cook, remember who is to eat the meat. A mousse de 
vollaile would disgust a bricklayer, but a plate of pork 
and beans might nauseate a bishop. 

So, Gentlemen, I have felt warranted in trespassing 
upon your courtesy; I deem myself justified in calling 
your attention to a subject that seems at first sight only 
academic but is in truth as practical as any other apper- 
taining to the work of the engineer. Next to doing things 
is the ability to state clearly how they are done; next 
to the possession of useful knowledge is the power to 
impart it to others. Men are known by their deeds, but 
more men are known by their writings; the deed is for- 
gotten, the writing remains. We judge the men we have 
not met by the letters, reports, and other writings emanat- 
ing from them ; there is an acquaintance wider than that 
of personal contact and more intellectual than that of the 
dinner table. To a young engineer the ability to write 
tersely and clearly is an accomplishment that makes him 
favorably known to those in authority. Many a youngster 
has obtained the chance of promotion because he compiled 
his routine reports so that they were instinct with intel- 
ligence instead of being dead bundles of words. This is 
only reasonable ; for a crisp and clear manner of writing 
can come only from vigor and lucidity of thought, such 
as indicate the efficiency for which the engineer contin- 
ually strives. Until you meet a man, you judge him by 
his letters; until you have seen the work of a technical 
man, you judge him by his reports. Therefore I urge the 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 137 

younger supporters of the Institution, particularly the 
students, to give heed to this function of the engineer; 
the older members may be past hope, for the proverb says 
that you cannot teach new tricks to an old dog, and in 
any case I do not expect my contemporaries to accept my 
views as authoritative, but to the younger men I can ap- 
peal with the enthusiasm of reform and with the convic- 
tion of experience, beseeching them to give heed to a 
matter the practical importance of which is undeniable 
and the neglect of which is a serious blemish upon a pro- 
fession that should combine the precision of the technol- 
ogist with the liberality of the scholar. 



The subject is 'standardization,' spelt with a z, not 
with an s. It is well to begin at the beginning and to 
standardize the first term used in the discussion that fol- 
lows. So I make a plea for the use of the last letter of 
the alphabet, in place of the sibilant, in words involving 
the idea of agency. Such usage is phonetic and conforms 
to the Greek derivation. We should write ' surprise ' with 
an s, but 'realize' with a z. In words such as 'civilize,' 
'emphasize,' 'apologize,' and 'authorize,' the termination 
ize has been adopted by the Oxford English Dictionary, 
the highest authority on such a matter. This usage was 
heartily endorsed by Herbert Spencer and by William 
Skeat. It is not an Americanism, although in vogue 
among educated Americans. 

The third word in the title to this communication is 
'English.' As I view the use of language, there are many 
dialects, such as British, American, and Australian, but 



138 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

there is only one English language. What happens to 
the dialects I do not greatly care ; but the corruption of 
the one language of our race is an evil against which I 
protest. We miners are the worst sinners in corrupting 
the verbal coinage minted by the masters of English 
prose. By our nomadic life and by our reckless borrowing 
of words from every country into which we penetrate in 
the search for minerals we are continually introducing 
counterfeits into the currency of our English speech, until 
it needs careful examination to distinguish between the 
genuine and the spurious. 

Spurious Words. From the sailors that left their ships 
to follow the rush to Ballarat and Bendigo, we got the 
word reef; to the ignorant immigrants w^ho caught the 
gold fever of 1849, and went to California, we owe the 
word ledge. In both cases, the combs of gold-bearing 
quartz appearing above the surface of the ground sug- 
gested terms prompted by the rudimentary ideas of people 
without previous experience in mining. Thus we became 
burdened with reef and ledge. These words are not 
needed; long before they were introduced we had lode 
and vein, both of which express all that reef and ledge 
express, and more besides. Reef has gained in dignity by 
adoption in South Africa, but it has not been universally 
accepted throughout English-speaking countries ; it is not 
an English word ; it is only British. Ledge has failed to 
win recognition outside America ; it is local and unneces- 
sary. Even the original significance of reef, at first as a 
ridge of rock appearing above the surface of the sea and 
then as a similar excrescence on the land, has been lost. 
In the case, for instance, of the Giant mine in Rhodesia, 
the word is applied to an orebody having no outcrop and 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 139 

« 
(according to the Company's engineers) so shapeless as 

to have neither strike nor dip. Lode is a good Anglo- 
Saxon word, meaning something that leads the miner to 
the discovery of ore ; neither size nor richness, shape nor 
origin, is involved. Hence it covers any kind of ore de- 
posit, from a big lens to the stringer connecting large 
masses of ore. It is a comprehensive term. And if the 
tabular persistent type of ore deposit is to be designated, • 
we have the word vein, carrying with it all those sug- 
gestions of continuity and ramification that it owes to 
an earlier use in physiology. Lode and vein are easily 
translatable into foreign languages, in which they find 
their counterparts, but reef and ledge are bewildering to 
a conscientious translator. The test of translation is one 
to be commended. 

Goldfield is a term sanctioned by use, and it has its 
analogues in coalfield and oilfield. The two latter have 
an obvious significance, for oil and coal are often found 
under a level surface, properly called 'fields.' For gold- 
field there is less excuse, because gold is usually mined 
in regions so mountainous as to suggest the antithesis of 
fields. Perhaps the park-like character of the country 
around Ballarat and Bendigo is responsible for this, as 
for other queer usages. However, let us accept goldfield ; 
it has won a place in the language and cannot now be 
rejected. But what shall be said of 'field' and 'fields,* 
without the compounding with gold, coal, or oil. In de- 
scriptions of the Rand it is not unusual to find references 
to happenings "on these fields," meaning "in this dis- 
trict." The phrase is bucolic. When not tied to the word 
'^'old,' as in goldfield, the use of 'field' fails utterly to 
suggest the idea of a locality devoted to the industry of 



140 STANDARDIZATION OP ENGLISH 

mining. It is as yet only a vulgar localism, to be avoided 
by anyone retaining a respect for correct English. 

Field has a companion in verbal iniquity: I refer to 
camp, which is used with similar carelessness in America. 
For example, writers in the daily press and illiterate min- 
ing engineers speak of "Cobalt camp," the fact being 
that Cobalt is a town, a well established settlement, which 
has developed far beyond the shifty condition of a pioneer 
outpost. 

The beginnings of a mining community, when tents 
are pitched close to the place of mineral discovery and 
before fixed habitations are erected, may not improperly 
be called a camp. It suggests the habitation of explorers. 
But to apply the word to towns possessing all the complex 
equipment of civilization is to beggar speech and to use 
baby language. Let us eschew both field and camp. For 
individual places, we have locality ; for a number of places 
grouped together, we have district; for large tracts of 
country, including many localities and several districts, 
we have region. 

Vulgarisms. Among the worst linguistic solecisms are 
the Australian words paddock and mullock, and the 
American muck and leaser. The sailors and sheep-herders 
who introduced paddock from the farm into the mine, 
using an enclosure for cattle to designate a receptacle for 
ore, had some excuse, not knowing better, but educated 
men who employ such bastard terms have no excuse what- 
ever. From mullock, as meaning waste rock, we get mul- 
locker, the man who shovels the waste, and mullocking, 
the operation itself. All three of them ought to be 
scrapped. Muck, mucker, mucking, and other inspiring 
derivatives, are gaining ground among the illiterate re- 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 141 

porters who fill the local Western American press with 
inaccurate trivialities. Muck is dirt, that is, matter in 
the wrong place. Previously we had been burdened with 
pay-dirt, and dirt in a general sense as meaning ore ; thus 
mill-dirt. But ore when broken underground is neither 
filth nor manure, nor even matter in the wrong place ; it 
is essentially in place, from which it is torn laboriously 
by the use of tools and explosives. The shattered metal- 
bearing rock handled by the miner is not rubbish; even 
when barren, it comes clean from the manufactory of 
Nature. The rubbish of language is not needed to des- 
ignate either the ore, the man that moves it, or the process 
by which it is transferred from the stope to the shaft. 

In a mine the valuable product is ore; the valueless is 
plain rock; the man who shovels either is a shoveler; the 
process is picking, shoveling, and tramming. Yet it was 
written in an article supposed to be technical: ''After the 
shooting is over, the mucker goes to work, the drill man 
climbs to the top of the muck, and by the time the four 
feet of ground shot down is mucked out, he is again ready 
to shoot his holes." This is the very muck of writing. 
Imagine an educated Frenchman trying to translate this 
verbal garbage into his own exquisitely precise language, 
or an Englishman, ignorant of mining, attempting to 
decipher such jargon. Leaser is used as a synonym for 
lessee. This is not only objectionable as a vulgarism but 
upsets the true meaning of words. Leaser is a corruption 
of lessor, and it is given as such in standard dictionaries. 
The man who lets a mine on lease is a lessor, and the 
man who takes the lease is the lessee ; to call him a leaser 
is to turn language inside out. The error arose through 
ignorance, and it is perpetuated by carelessness. 



142 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

Not that I object to the introduction of new words to 
designate new ideas, for such additions enrich the lan- 
guage. Thus 'indicator,' 'laccolite/ * bonanza,' 'tundra,' 
'geyser,' are examples of terms from various sources, all 
of which aid the power of English speech. They stand 
for ideas not represented by any English word; they 
strengthen, rather than corrupt, the language of Shakes- 
peare and Milton, of Ruskin and Huxley. A language 
grows by such accretions ; it is thus that English has bor- 
rowed from every country with which our people have 
traded or fought. But importations should not be made 
heedlessly, especially into that part of the language de- 
voted to the expression of the precise ideas of technology. 

The Significance of Words is lessened by giving them 
a variable meaning; the word that has many meanings 
fails to carry any particular meaning strongly; by em- 
ploying words out of their strict sense we enfeeble lan- 
guage. This is particularly^ true in technology; if words 
are to be employed with precision they must not be dulled 
by undiscriminating usage. Thus, locate and location are 
used in mining to signify the act and the result of the 
act of delimiting a claim by placing monuments or stakes 
at the corners of a given area. If, however, locate and 
location be used in other senses, as the synonym for 'sit- 
uate,' 'reside,' 'selecting a site,' and so forth, confusion 
may be caused, lessening the force of the words when 
employed correctly. Thus: 

"He located the Midas claim on January 15, 1909." 

"He sold the Midas location to the Exploration Com- 
pany." 

These illustrate correct technical usage, but the fol- 
lowing are incorrect: 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 143 

1. ''The mine is located in Northern Rhodesia." 

2. ' ' The mill was located on Strawberry creek. ' * 

3. "Mr. John Smith is now located at Silverton." 

4. ''The superintendent located the ore-shoot on the 
fifth level." 

Some of these are American colloquialisms, but they 
are creeping into English as spoken by mining men and 
even educated engineers. In the first, the word located 
is redundant ; omit it, and the sentence loses nothing. In 
the second, the objectionable word should be replaced 
by 'erected,' 'built,' or 'constructed,' unless it is meant 
that the mill-site was located at the place designated. A 
mill-site is located like a mining claim and by much the 
same procedure, but a mill is made by manual labor ap- 
plied to selected material. The third contains a common 
Western Americanism; in this case Mr. Smith should be 
described as 'living' at Silverton, or as 'residing' there, 
or more specifically, as having 'rented a house' or an 
office in that locality. In the last example the superin- 
tendent 'found' the ore-shoot, or 'ascertained the position' 
of it, or 'obtained a clue' how to reach it by cross-cutting 
and driving; here a vague and incorrect term should be 
replaced by one that is accurately significant. 

Carboniferous and carbonaceous furnish a further ex- 
ample. If a farmer is writing, he may be forgiven if he 
use the two terms interchangeably as meaning carbon- 
bearing, but a technical man should know that the first 
is the name given to a geological period, and the second 
to substances containing carbon. In order further to dis- 
tinguish terms somewhat similar it is usual to give the 
first the capital C and to spell the second with a small c. 
In England, where Carboniferous originated, the name 



144 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

was given to the strata of a period identified with the 
formation of coal, but the coal measures of other coun- 
tries, such as New Zealand and Colorado, are found in 
rocks of Tertiary and Cretaceous age, and in those coun- 
tries the Carboniferous strata do not yield coal, although 
they are co-eval with the series bearing that name in 
Great Britain. Moreover, a rock may be both Carbon- 
iferous and carbonaceous, as in Missouri, where a lime- 
stone belonging to a period immediately succeeding the 
Devonian is black with the product of decomposed vegetal 
remains. 

Cement, cementing, and cementation are used in a per- 
plexing manner. A cement is " a substance that, by hard- 
ening, causes objects between which it is applied to adhere 
firmly." And the binding of fragmentary material by 
means of a mortar-like substance that subsequently hard- 
ens is called cementing. Careless writers, however, 
appear to think that it is elegant to use cementation, 
forgetting that in metallurgy the latter is a term applied 
to **a process of causing a chemical change in a substance 
by heating it while embedded in a powdered mass of 
another substance," as converting wrought iron into steel 
in a bed of charcoal. Cement, associated usually with the 
idea of binding material, is employed in metallurgy to 
describe a finely divided metal obtained by precipitation, 
as 'cement-copper.' This use is unnecessary, for 'precip- 
itated' copper is more descriptive. Let words, especially 
technical terms, be kept for specific uses, thereby giving 
them an unmistakable and definite meaning. There is 
usually a word for each duty; nothing is gained by con- 
fusing these duties; on the contrary, a word taken from 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 145 

its proper sphere to perform the task already allotted to 
another becomes degraded. 

Partly and partially are, by most people, used inter- 
changeably, so that both suffer by the exchange. Even a 
speaker so skilful as Lord Rosebery said recently: ''It is 
perhaps better to speak with no knowledge of the game 
[of golf] than with a partial knowledge of the game." 
Here partial is used as the synonym of ' incomplete ' ; and 
we know that no golf-player could possess an impartial, 
or unprejudiced knowledge, of the ancient and honor- 
able pastime. I am reminded of the mayor, who, on 
being asked to preside at a political meeting, and wishing 
to emphasize the fact that he officiated in no partisan 
capacity, said: ''I am not here as a politician; I am 
neither partial nor impartial." Partly and partially are 
different words, so are partial and in part. In the trans- 
actions of this Institution it is recorded that members 
have given ''partial" analyses of various ores, when, of 
course, an impartial analysis was required, and a composi- 
tion in part or ' incomplete ' was meant. 

A technical writer begins his description of a district 
by offering "the following partial history," when we ex- 
pect from him a perfectly unbiased account of its early 
development. Another man was "partially inclined to 
adopt filter-pressing instead of decantation by reason of 
the greater simplicity of the latter process;" from which 
one would infer that he had been subventioned by the 
makers of iron vats, despite the blandishment of filter- 
press manufacturers. It may be that only once in twenty 
times is a confusion created by such interchangeable use 
of two words possessing different shades of meaning, but 
the general effect is to dull the fine edge of their signifi- 



146 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

cance, and to unfit them for the rare occasions when we 
draw upon the full measure of their strength as vehicles 
of thought. 

Calcining and roasting lose in value by careless use; 
calcining should be applied to the process for removing 
carbon di-oxide from carbonates, and roasting should be 
restricted to the expulsion of sulphur by heat in the pres- 
ence of oxygen. 

Strike has two distinct and opposite meanings : a share- 
holder is frightened by a labor strike and delighted with 
the news of a strike of rich ore. Another technical use 
of strike refers to the trend or direction of a vein of ore 
or a stratum of rock as stated in points of the compass; 
this is an old and well-established usage. As strike be- 
longs peculiarly to the economics of labor, and also to 
geology, some other word should be employed to desig- 
nate the finding of ore. There are plenty: we can say 
that rich ore has been 'found,' 'discovered,' 'cut,' or 'in- 
tersected'; we can speak of the 'find,' 'discovery,' or 
'uncovering' of rich ore. A level 'reaches' the ore, the 
miner 'breaks' into an orebody, the drill-hole 'penetrates' 
a bonanza. In fact, it is easier to find a s^^noym than 
to discover the rich ore. 

Payable is a vulgarism now rampant on the Rand. 
Ore does not pay nor is it paid, literally. A thing is 
payable when it is unpaid and due, or when it is capable 
of being discharged by payment. What is meant is, that 
the exploitation of the ore yields a profit. Why not say 
so, and use the word profitable? A thing is profitable 
when it produces or results in profit. An ore capable of 
yielding I85. per ton in a mine where the total cost of 
operations is I85. per ton is payable in the colloquial sense, 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 147 

but it is not profitable, for to be that it must yield more 
than I85. per ton. Therefore, payable and profitable are 
not even synonyms. The confusion in verbal meaning has 
produced an economic confusion on the Rand, as else- 
where, and exemplifies the demoralizing effect of a loose 
terminology. 

Confusion between time and place is shown in such 
expressions as these : 

"At times the ore shows free gold." 
Meaning: "In places the ore shows free gold." 
"Traces of oxidation are sometimes seen at a depth of 
850 feet." 

Here, sometimes should be replaced by a word or 
phrase indicating relative position in place, not time, for 
the 'oxidation' can be observed — by aid of a miner's 
candle — by day or night, at dawn or sunset. If the 'oxi- 
dation' is not everywhere visible at a depth of 850 ft., 
it should be stated where it is to be seen, for that would 
indicate the conditions modifying the. chemical action sig- 
nified by the word ' oxidation. ' 

Preposition- Verbs. Another fault to which we British- 
ers are prone is the excessive use of the preposition-verb, 
that is, a verb followed immediately by a preposition, as 
' meet with, ' ' fill up, ' ' carry on, ' and so forth. In German 
such preposition-verbs are compounded, so that they be- 
come harmless, although still unlovely. In British speech 
they are usually followed by another preposition, as: 
"The richest mine I met with in my travels." When 
spoken, the first preposition follows the verb without a 
pause so that the second receives fuller emphasis, but 
when printed there is no such distinction ; hence the ex- 
pression becomes awkward. Another effect is to cause 



148 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

repetition, as in the Westminster Gazette, where I found 
the following: "One of the conclusions at which Lord 
Rosebery had arrived at in the study of Dr. Johnson is 
that he would have made a splendid journalist." 

Further, the use of preposition-verbs may entail the 
ending of a sentence, or even a paragraph, with an in- 
significant word, the preposition coming last. William 
Dean Howells in Harper ^s Magazine (July, 1909), con- 
cludes an article thus: "This is the climax I have been 
working up to, and I call it a fine one ; as good as a story 
to-be-continued ever ended an instalment with." This is 
a childish anti-climax, and I marvel that so skilful a 
writer should be guilty of phraseology so slovenly. 

In The Climber, by E. F. Benson, a writer of high 
repute, it is written: "Lucia flicked off with the tassel 
of her riding whip a fly that her mare was twitching its 
skin to get rid of." Note how two prepositions are hud- 
dled into helpless collision, explaining in part the result- 
ing confusion of gender. 

A humorist once stated the rule thus: "Never use a 
preposition to end up a sentence with." 

The following additional examples will suggest the 
frequent use of this peculiarly British idiom: 

1. "He can be depended on to be loyal." 

2. "The consulting engineer will work out a system 
of metallurgical treatment." 

3. "The proceedings ended up with a dinner." 

4. "Amalgamation has been done away with on the 
Rand." 

5. "Before arriving at any decision, the directors 
decided to carry out more experiments." 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 149 

6. **The stock of tools was disposed of to the trib- 
uters." 

7. ** Plans are being drawn up for erecting new fur- 
naces." 

8. **The company starts off with plenty of capital." 

9. *'It is necessary to keep up a steady policy of 
development." 

10. ''This product is dealt with later by cyanida- 
tion." 

11. "Work is being carried on on the Violet claim." 

12. "The furnace is charged with fine silicious ore 
previously wetted down." 

13. "The sulphides come in on the next level." 

14. "Water came in at considerable pressure." 

15. "New tubing was put in without disturbing the 
old." 

16. " Henry Potter was called in to apply his method. ' ' 
Instances might be multiplied with the greatest facil- 
ity; scarcely a page of a report or a technical article is 
free from this verbal blemish. Once attention has been 
directed to this awkward locution you will become restive 
whenever you see or hear it, and in the end you will in- 
stinctively avoid it. It is easy to do so ; for every preposi- 
tion-verb there is a synonym that expresses the same 
meaning better. 

Thus, in the first example, depended on can be replaced 
by 'trusted.' 

In the second, work out can be replaced advantage- 
ously by 'devise.' 

In the third, ended is better without the up, and ' con- 
cluded' covers the ground perfectly. 

The fourth is a particularly heinous offence, and one 



150 STANDARDISATION OF ENGLISH 

common enough ; three prepositions follow each other in 
single file and two of them can be dropped by substituting 
the word ' discarded, ' in lieu of done away with. 

In the fifth, the directors might have decided to 'make' 
further experiments before 'reaching' a final decision. 

In the sixth, it is probable that the tools were 'sold'; 
if not, let us be informed exactly how they were trans- 
ferred. 

In the seventh, up is redundant ; or drawn may be re- 
placed by 'prepared,' since drawn up does not necessarily 
refer to the work of a draftsman. 

In the eighth, the company might just as well start 
plainly without the off. 

In the ninth, keep up is a clumsy substitute for 'main- 
tain. ' 

In the tenth, dealt with is vague, sloppy, and untech- 
nical. 'Treated' may serve, but 'leached' may state the 
fact more correctly. Whatever is done to the product, 
let it be stated explicitly. 

In the eleventh the preposition is repeated, the first 
one doing duty as an adverb. The awkwardness of this is 
apparent; in speaking, the first on follows closely after 
carried, as if they were compounded, but in print there 
is no suggestion of this intimate relation. 

In the twelfth it may be imagined what would happen 
if the ore were wetted up, and it is inferred that by being 
wetted down it becomes so moistened that dust does not 
rise up! Let us re-cast the sentence and say that "the 
furnace is charged with fine silicious ore previously 
wetted." 

In the thirteenth we have an extremely common usage ; 
the ores do not come, either in, on, or out; the miner 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 151 

comes to the ore and finds it by hard digging. The sen- 
tence can be amended thus: "Sulphide ore is first cut 
on the next level." 

The fourteenth is similar; here, came in can be re- 
placed by 'entered,' or 'flowed,' or 'ran,' or 'spurted,' as 
the case may be, and it would do any of these under, not 
at, high pressure. Considerable is a poor word; it is 
merely vague. A speaker, entangled in verbiage, once 
said concerning a proposal that "it was a considerable 
consideration that should be carefully considered." 

In the fifteenth, put in seems almost unavoidable, but 
'inserted' is better. 

In the sixteenth, Mr. Potter might be 'retained' or 
'engaged.' 

In most of these the preposition linked to the .verb is 
followed by another preposition, and when reading such 
sentences there is occasional difficulty in recognizing im- 
mediately the proper function of each separate preposi- 
tion. It may be argued that all preposition-verbs cannot 
be dispensed with, but I venture to say that we can avoid 
the use of preposition-verbs, as in this last sentence. 

An elderly lady, discussing street-corner bookmakers, 
said that "they ought to be taken up and put down," 
meaning that they should be arrested by the police and 
suppressed by the law. 

Why should we melt down a charge and melt up a 
slag? Why should we settle down in the country in order 
to settle up our debts in the City? Why should we put 
up with this clumsy use of words when we can gain 
lucidity by discarding the bad habit? 

I beg you to give this little detail your earnest consid- 
eration ; you will be repaid. Re-arrange the sentence and 



152 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

substitute synonyms; above all, select words that accu- 
rately express your meaning and reject this infantile 
jargon so disfiguring to English speech. 

The Indefinite Pronoun. Next, I venture to draw at- 
tention to a habit peculiarly British; I refer to the use 
of the indefinite pronoun one. This habit may express 
the conventional self-repression of the well regulated 
Britisher, and, as so regarded, it has the merit of mod- 
esty; but it is out of place in technology. A technical 
writer is a scientific witness whose testimony is valuable 
because he himself vouches for the accuracy of it, there- 
fore the hiding of his egotism under the mock-modesty 
of the indefinite pronoun is contrary to the purpose sup- 
posed to prompt his utterance. If a witness in a court 
of law were asked at what time he passed the spot where 
a murder was committed, he would not be allowed to 
reply: "One dines late, therefore one did not walk to 
the club until half -past nine," meaning "I dined late, 
therefore I did not walk, etc." The fact that he, the wit- 
ness, did this or that was the only reason for admitting 
the testimony and the only reason why it possessed any 
value as elucidating the circumstances under investiga- 
tion. 

Technical writers are witnesses to the truth ; as a rule 
the main reason for recording the statements made by 
them is the fact that their personal equation is such as 
to give value to the testimony, otherwise their observa- 
tions might just as well be put into a phonograph or a 
pianola and serve as a counter-irritant to the blase or the 
ennuye of Oshkosh and Kalamazoo. 

To begin a statement with the first personal pronoun 
I may be assertive; at least, it asserts the responsibility 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 153 

of the writer, it identifies the witness, and places him on 
record as testifying to the fact. To begin with one is to 
start under a cloud of impersonality, to leave it uncertain 
whose testimony is cited, and to detract from the feeling 
of responsibility reasonably to be expected. 

An engineer not unknown to some of my readers is 
in the habit of beginning his remarks by saying: "I my- 
self personally," accentuating his own responsibility for 
the statements emanating from him. This may be an 
extreme form of emphasis ; indeed many will be inclined 
to call it 'bad form,' but it is preferable to the weak 
irresponsibility typified by the impersonal pronoun. In 
technology, 'bad form' is less objectionable than obscurity. 

Obscurity of phraseology is not always accidental. I 
knew an editor, who, on being invited to examine any 
new machinery, would avoid the trouble ; yet, while deem- 
ing it a waste of time, he wished to give his readers the 
idea that he had actually made an investigation ; so he 
used to start a 'leader' by saying: "We have recently 
had the opportunity of inspecting Mr. John Robinson's 
machine, etc." The careless reader would assume that 
the 'opportunity' had been utilized. 

The use of one is a British idiosyncrasy, born of false 
elegance and strengthened by convention; it is misused 
most by those who deem precision to be academic and 
confuse the thoughtful use of words with pedantry. 

In the Westminster Gazette^ it was written recently: 
"Then cricket will become a sport without nerves, and 
one of which one will willingly become a spectator." 
Here the numeral and the pronoun are used confusedly. 

Lord Rosebery remarks that "The less one says about 
a toast one knows nothing about the better for one's self 



154 STANDARDIZATION OP ENGLISH 

and the audience." Here it is a wearisome affectation. 

An experienced journalist writes: ''Of all places 
Chicago occurs to one as the most gloomy and the most 
oppressive, as more eloquent of the smoke, noise, and 
bustle of American life than most American cities. ' ' This 
reflection is only interesting when backed by the person- 
ality of the writer ; as the view of a syndicate, ' combine, ' 
chimera, or mob, it has no value. 

In technical writing it is well to sacrifice elegance to 
directness of statement; the writer on mining and metal- 
lurgy is called, not to pose, but to speak to the point 
without wasteful circumlocution or mincing affectation. 
A few examples taken from published writings will illus- 
trate : 

In a recent bulletin of this Institution I find the fol- 
lowing: ''One had noticed that in Cornwall it was re- 
markable that the miners had never been able to get rid 
of the influence of the smelters in selling their ore." 

This observation is only valuable because made by 
Mr. A. ; as a supposition imputed to the man in the street 
it is not worth recording. The sentence may be amended 
thus: 

"I have noticed that in Cornwall the miners, when 
selling ore, appear unable to avoid the influence of the 
smelters. ' ' 

On the next page of the same bulletin, Mr. B. is re- 
corded as saying: "The mines in the Malay were chiefly 
worked on the open-cast system ; one found, however, the 
Chinese working in shafts to depths of 80 or 90 ft. or 
more." Also: "One might see within quite a small area 
30 or 40 shafts working." 

These observations likewise are penetrating only on 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 155 

account of Hhe man behind the gun'; it is Mr. B. who 
has examined the locality and actually seen the Chinese 
in these shafts ; it is a particular engineer and not a dis- 
embodied spirit that has gathered these facts. As gen- 
eralizations, they are valueless; as records of specific ex- 
perience, they are worthy of preservation. Therefore the 
change should be made thus: "I saw the Chinese work- 
ing in shafts as deep as 80 ft. or even more ; and I myself 

saw as many as 30 shafts within a single area of ," 

here the dimensions should be stated. 'Small' means 
nothing until we have been informed regarding the speak- 
er's idea of size. 

On the next page Mr. C. gives information on pros- 
pecting in Pahang. He says: ''One used generally to 
prospect with a cocoanut shell, and where one wanted to 
try a piece of ground on a bigger scale the thing would 
be to take down a tree, beat the bark off, spread it out, 
and use that as a launder. One would follow, etc. One 
also came across very curious furnaces, etc." 

Is not the reader of these sentences entitled to enquire 
whether it was a pallid adumbration or a live man that 
went prospecting, cut down trees, made launders, washed 
tin-bearing gravel, and saw "curious furnaces." These 
observations are only interesting because backed by the 
intelligent identity of Mr. C. ; if ascribed to John Doe or 
Richard Roe, they are worthless; as technical testimony 
they vanish into thin air. 

The whole description has an air of unreality ; it bears 
the signs of a London fog. If one wanted to try a piece 
of ground, etc., one would do it as described. But as Mr. 
C. undertook to test the supposed gravel, he ought to 
eliminate the vagueness, delete the one, omit the very, 



156 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

reject such a vulgarism as ''the thing would be," and 
take off, not only the bark of a tree, but his coat, prepara- 
tory to using English undefiled. 

In the same bulletin, it is recorded that Mr. D. said : 
''His impression was that if one added strong sulphuric 
acid to a pulp which had less than its full proportion of 
water, one was encouraging the acid to waste its energies 
in taking up the alumina and not the copper. One got a 
better extraction by diluting the acid." Again the same 
speaker said: "On the other hand, one could not neutral- 
ize all the free acid, but one could get complete precipita- 
tion before neutralization was complete." 

The affected modesty of the indefinite pronoun robs 
these statements of their value as emanating from a metal- 
lurgist of high repute. No nebulous nonentity performs 
metallurgical experiments, nor are they performed by 
accidental aggregates of persons, but by a specific indi- 
vidual possessing special fitness for such work. Not 
everybody could get a better extraction by diluting the 
acid. Conceivably it might be done so clumsily as to 
spoil the chemical operation. Not everybody could get 
complete precipitation, but Mr. D. might, simply because 
he had done such work successfully on previous occasions. 
We want the testimony of a witness, not the hearsay of 
the market-place. 

Therefore the foregoing sentences can be amended 
advantageously thus: "My impression is that the addi- 
tion of strong sulphuric acid to a pulp containing less 
than its full proportion of water tends to cause a waste 
of acid by reason of the solution of the alumina, rather 
than the copper. A better extraction is obtained by 
diluted acid. On the other hand, all the free acid cannot 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 157 

be neutralized, but complete precipitation is practicable 
before neutralization is effected." 

In this amended version I write in the first, instead 
of the third person ; the reporting of discussions in the 
third person is based on parliamentary custom, but it is 
one that ought to be discarded, for it often causes con- 
fusion, and always requires the editing of remarks that 
could otherwise be recorded in the ipsissima verba of the 
speaker. Nothing is gained, and something is lost, by the 
old custom. 

Quoting again, I find that Mr. E. wrote concerning 
heavy stamps: ''One could take it, however, that as the 
whole question was purely one of ultimate economy, etc." 
''Whilst one could readily grant these points were of 
minor importance they must not be entirely overlooked." 
"One found then that as Mr. Caldecott believed in the 
use of fine crushers with a light stamp, he must further 
believe that, etc." 

"In one instance one had anything but a positive dis- 
charge and a positive feed, whilst in the other, one had 
both of these points absolutely defined." 

"There were other considerations that prevented one 
from arriving at any settled conclusion." 

In two of these quotations the pronoun one and the 
numeral one are brought into awkward collision. It is 
a fact that all these statements of Mr. E. have value as 
coming from a practical worker in the field of wet metal- 
lurgy; as generalizations imputed to a consensus of opin- 
ion they are worthless; most of them are debatable, and 
were debated. 

It will be noted that I have gone freely to the bulletins 
of the Institution for examples of the misuse of this word. 



158 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

Whether frequency in the use of it be due to the authors 
of papers, to the official reporter, or to the honorary edi- 
tors I do not know, and I evade personal criticism by not 
knowing. 

The correct use of one in statements of an impersonal 
character is not difficult to distinguish from the sloppy 
usage against which I have ventured to protest. Here is 
an example : 

''One cannot foretell how long an inundation such as 
this will continue to spread, but as one investigates the 
local situation from day to day one appreciates more fully 
the widespread structural injury to buildings and 
streets." The first one is used properly, but unneces- 
sarily, while the last two are incorrect. The first refers 
to an impersonal idea, the other two refer to the personal 
observation of the writer, an English correspondent writ- 
ing from Paris to an English newspaper. The paragraph 
may be amended thus : 

"Nobody can foretell the duration of an inundation, 
but as I investigate the local conditions from day to day, 
I become impressed by the widespread structural injury 
already done to buildings and streets." 

Permit me to give another example : 

"One hesitates to prophesy the outcome of the elec- 
tion, but one feels the urgent need to fight the socialistic 
propaganda of the Chancellor of the Exchequer." 

Here, also, the first one is attached to an impression 
of a general character such as might emanate from the 
man in the moon or the shadow of a peripatetic philos- 
opher, but the second one introduces a violent partisan 
who makes a statement undoubtedly repugnant to at 
least half the community ; therefore, the mock-modest in- 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 159 

dividual who expresses so decided an opinion ought to 
use the first person singular, and accept the full responsi- 
bility of the pronoun I. 

Further examples of the misuse of the impersonal pro- 
noun could be given ; every bulletin of this Institution is 
full of them, every technical article contains them, falsify- 
ing the style and obscuring the sense. Such resultant 
vpgueness of diction leaves it uncertain whether the 
writer is stating conclusions founded upon his own expe- 
rience, or is merely proffering the distillate of opinions 
supposed to be generally accepted. The chimera ruminat- 
ing in a vacuum concerning the advisability of second 
intentions, or the nigger looking for a black cat at mid- 
night in a coal cellar, is no better type of the obscure 
than this little word one, with its three letters and three- 
score meanings. If once your attention is fully directed 
to the havoc played by this essentially British — not Eng- 
lish — usage, you will, I feel confident, avoid it as a serious 
blemish in the accurate and intelligible expression of your 
ideas by means of technical writing. 

The Unnecessary Plural. Now I come to a tendency 
concerning which I have spoken on other occasions and 
in other places. This bad habit of squandering a useful 
inflection ought to be checked, and, I am proud to say, 
has been checked. When it was decided recently by the 
leaders in technical science at Johannesburg to prepare 
comprehensive treatises on the mining and metallurgy of 
the Rand, the style-sheet sent to contributors bore the 
request that they use 'slime,' 'concentrate,' 'tailing,' and 
so forth, in the singular unless the reference was to sev- 
eral kinds of these products. I take this opportunity of 
expressing my keen appreciation of this practical compli- 



160 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

ment. It is a distinct victory against a Mormonism of 
style that simply robs us of a most useful inflection. 

Since the above words were written the members of 
this Institution have had an example of grammatical self- 
restraint in Walter McDermott's paper on fine concentra- 
tion, in which he discarded the use of the unnecessary 
plural. I venture to say that any careful reader of that 
most suggestive paper can detect the greater clearness of 
expression attained by the recognition of the diJffierence 
between slime and slimes, sand and sands, concentrate 
and concentrates, and so forth. In a kindred article by 
Gelasio Caetani, on the 'Milling of Lead-Silver Ore,' ap- 
pearing in the current issue of The Mining Magazine, those 
who are critical will find another example of the clarifica- 
tion of technical writing by the proper employment of 
a useful inflection. Surely it is an advantage to know 
that the writer is referring to several kinds of middling 
when he says middlings, and only one product when he 
says middling ; that he has in mind one particular type of 
residue when he uses the word tailing, or the product from 
a particular machine when he says concentrate, and a 
number of such products when he says concentrates ; that 
the slime from one jig can be mixed with the slime from 
another jig and the resultant slimes can be subjected to 
the same process or be kept separate for diverse treat- 
ment, according to circumstances intelligible to the mill- 
man. 

If people will persist in saying ''the ores" of a mine 
and "the rocks" of a locality when they refer to one 
kind of ore and one variety of rock, they deprive them- 
selves of the distinction between singular and plural. 

If a mill produces a lead concentrate and a zinc con- 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 161 

centrate you can say that it produces concentrates; but 
if you speak thus of one kind of concentrate such as iron 
pyrite, yielded by the simplest type of gold-bearing quartz 
ore, you have no means of establishing the difference be- 
tween one product and two products. 

Tailing, slime, and concentrate are to be found in the 
dictionary, yet one might infer that they did not exist 
until invented by a hypercritical editor. A tailing is the 
refuse from the wet metallurgical treatment of an ore ; 
if the refuse from several processes or from several mills 
be mentioned, it is correct to call them 'tailings.' In a 
cyanide plant several kinds of slime are separated from 
several grades of sand, and when these products are 
united in fact or in description they become 'slimes' and 
'sands,' but not until then. 

We speak of 'fines': why not 'coarses'? The minutely 
comminuted product from a crusher is the fine, which is 
separated, by screening or classification, from the ' coarse ' ; 
if several discharges of fine stuff are mingled they make 
'fines,' but if the coarse from several directions is mixed 
it is barred by euphony from becoming 'coarses. ' 

But surely euphony does not forbid the wider use of 
the singular; on the contrary, the excessive sibilant be- 
comes unpleasant in such compounds as 'slimes-plants,' 
'sands-vats,' and 'tailings-sumps.' They sound better, 
and they are correct, in the form of 'slime-plants,' 'sand- 
vats,' and 'tailing-sumps.' 

From the current descriptions of mining regions it 
might be supposed that 'schists' always existed in multi- 
tudinous variety, for it is rarely indeed that a writer is 
content to say that schist is found. A lode is said to 
penetrate schists and limestones as if several formations 



162 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

or several varieties of these rocks were to be indicated; 
but often it will prove that the writer associates the 
plural with the multiplicity of strata, using limestones as 
the equivalent of numerous layers of limestone. 

Pluralizing has gone so far that semi-literate people 
will talk of "stratas"; educated men speak of '*data,'^ 
as if it were the singular (saying ''that data"), and I 
have known even foliae to get into print as the plural of 
folia, in forgetfulness that it is itself the plural of folium. 
All of which goes to show that the singular of these terms 
(stratum, datum, and folium) is so little used as to have 
passed into innocuous desuetude. 

Further examples will illustrate : 

' ' The labor situation on these fields is critical. ' ' Apart 
from the glaring vulgarism of a phrase common on the 
Rand, it is a fact that the writer was referring to a single 
goldfield and not to several. 

''In January we treated 3186 tons of concentrates, and 
produced 2711 tons of calcines." One kind of concen- 
trate was treated, yielding a calcine similarly uniform 
in character. The plural is wasted. 

"In December the furnaces were fed with concentrates 
from different mines of variable composition, but making 
a charge so mixed as to average 22% in sulphur." Here 
we have the correct use of the plural, the significance of 
which would, however, be lost if employed after the pre- 
ceding quotation. 

"Our costs for roasting are of little value on account 
of," etc. Why not cost? He refers to one concrete 
figure, not to several. If he spoke of the costs of crush- 
ing, roasting, and smelting as amounting altogether to a 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 163 

specified sum, then he would be correct, for he would be 
referring now to three different items. 

''The reason for the low tonnages is that 45% of the 
blast furnace charge is concentrates." As a matter of 
fact, the one significant word that remains in the singular 
ought to be in the plural, for several blast-furnaces were 
involved, but only one kind of concentrate. Why not 
say: ''The reason for the low tonnage is that 45% of 
the blast-furnace charges is concentrate. ' ' 

"The decrease in the reduction costs to 3^. per ton 
had the effect of increasing the ore reserves to 200,000 
tons." The cost of reduction is one item, not more; and 
the stock of available ore is a reserve, not several re- 
serves. 

"The large capacities now talked of were with the 
use of coarser screens." Here we have the preposition- 
verb ("talked of") producing an awkward sentence. 
Two meaningless plurals are employed. The sentence can 
be amended thus; "The large capacity quoted was ren- 
dered possible by the use of coarse screens." 

"Extensive tracts of auriferous gravels." He meant 
an "extensive tract of auriferous gravel"; the reference 
was to one tract only and to one kind of gold-bearing 
gravel. He thought the plurals sounded more comprehen- 
sive, finer, and larger; so he squandered a useful inflec- 
tion like a sailor on the spree. 

"These estates contain important deposits of iron ores 
as well as gold and copper ores." 

Only one kind of iron ore — namely, hematite — was 
known to exist, hence the plural was wrong ; but the gold 
and copper occurred in diverse ores, therefore in that case 
the plural was right. The property consisted of one con- 



164 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

solidated estate; the use of '^estates" is due to careless 
magniloquence. 

Profit and cost are employed less frequently than 
'profits' and 'costs,' especially the first, because the plural 
form looms bigger. As a matter of fact there may be 
occasional justification for 'costs,' as including several dif- 
ferent items of expenditure, but the ' profit ' is usually not 
known until the end of a series of operations has been 
reached, and constitutes a single item of account. 

Another incorrect use of the plural is connected with 
the word company. We are told that "the company in- 
tend to erect a new mill," or the company have decided 
to pay a second dividend," or "the company are rich in 
property, as they own 14 claims and a mill-site." In the 
first of these quotations the word company is used in the 
place of 'management,' in the second instead of 'direc- 
tors,' and in the last instead of 'shareholders.' A com- 
pany is an organization of shareholders, the directors are 
trustees for the shareholders, and the management is the 
executive selected by the directors to supervise opera- 
tions. Therefore, in making statements concerning the 
affairs of a company, it is well to say what part of the 
organization is meant. Moreover, the company as a cor- 
poration is a legal entity, it is a unit, and should be fol- 
lowed by a verb in the singular. 

The same is true of such words as the Government, 
the Opposition, the House of Lords, the United States. 
We read that "the Government have decided to insist on 
the abolition of the veto heretofore exercised by the House 
of Lords." Here "the Government" means the mem- 
bers of the Cabinet acting together and regarded as a 
unit; therefore it should be said that "the Government 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 165 

has decided, etc." Similarly, ''the House of Lords is in 
session" and "the Opposition is willing to pass the 
Budget," not, as u^ally stated, the House of Lords or 
the Opposition are doing this or that. "The United States 
is a country offering free scope to individual talent;" 
this is correct, unless we mean to refer to the individual 
States of the Union. 

But these examples may seem to depart from tech- 
nology; let us consider the common usage of the plural 
after quantities, thus: "2000 tons were' treated in the 
new stamp-mill." Here the idea is that all of this ore 
was treated in one continuous operation and as one spe- 
cific quantity of material, therefore the verb ought to be 
in the singular. 

Take another example: "Five tons of ore were 
separately tested by five different treatments with a view 
to selecting the process most suitable." Here the plural 
idea is involved, for each of the five tons was individually 
subjected to experimental treatment. "76,000 tons of 
slime and 12,500 tons of zinc tailing have been sold." 
But: "40,450 tons of concentrate has been purchased." 
"£3827 was spent on capital account and £13,000 has been 
applied to development." "The ore reserve amounts to 
107,000 tons, which is mostly below the fifth level." 
"£115,000 is the purchase price, and £60,000 has been sub- 
scribed for working capital." To say that "£115,000 were 
the purchase price, and £60,000 or 60,000 pounds have 
been subscribed," is to suggest that the price was paid 
sovereign by sovereign, instead of a lump sum, and that 
the subscriptions were received in driblets instead of in 
large checks. 

Meaningless phrases that may serve to disarm crit- 



166 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

icism in casual conversation are singularly out of place 
in precise writing. Examples will illustrate: 

(1) ''The dryness of the season has not hindered mill- 
ing, at least not to any extent. ' ' 

(2) "The belief exists to some extent that the ores are 
due to secondary enrichment." 

(3) "The gold veins, occurring as they generally do 
in the schist, are not permanent." 

(4) "The reefs are generally found to conform to the 
stratification of the country-rock in which they occur. ' ' 

These examples of pretentious ineptitude could be 
multiplied indefinitely. They are common ; they are the 
mark of an incomplete grasp of the subject and of an 
obscurity that is disguised as mock-modest profundity. 
Other errors are more obvious : Permanent is used for 
'persistent'; no vein is permanent except by being left 
untouched; it is the extraction of ore that makes it im- 
permanent. Stratification is only applicable to country- 
rock; the 'reefs', or more properly lodes, could not con- 
form to the stratification of any rock except that in which 
they exist; if their dip happened to be parallel to the 
stratification of distant rocks, the fact would not be illu- 
minating. These four mongrel sentences may be amended 
thus: 

(1) "Milling has not been seriously hindered by the 
dryness of the season." 

(2) "A belief prevails that the ore is the result of 
secondary enrichment." 

(3) "The gold veins traverse schist, and are not per- 
sistent." 

(4) "The lodes generally conform to the stratifiea- 



IN TECHNICAL LITERATURE 167 

tion." Other variations may commend themselves, ac- 
cording to the taste of the individual reader. 

To any extent, to some extent, and to a certain extent 
are usually redundant, and the last is the most objectiona- 
ble, for the word certain in such a context means uncer- 
tain, if it means anything. I am reminded of a Chancellor 
of the Exchequer who expressed himself as endorsing his 
opponent's argument ''to a certain extent." Gladstone 
turned to Trevelyan, the biographer of Macaulay, and 
whispered: ''Endorse to a certain extent! What a 
phrase! we want your uncle back among us." Certain 
is a definite word used with a most indefinite meaning. 
It is the basis for one of the commonest vulgarisms of 
English speech. Thus: 

"A certain amount of mining law is required by every 
mining engineer." 

The writer means that a smattering or slight knowl- 
edge, at least, is essential. There is nothing certain about 
the amount of the knowledge indicated. 

Again : " A certain amount of money has been set aside 
for a mill." This may mean a fixed or definite amount; 
but it may also mean an unknown or indefinite amount. 
The word is merely a sound signifying nothing. 

The painting of the lily is no more supererogatory than 
the verbal decorations used by those who bespatter their 
sentences with vain adverbs. Very is useful according to 
the rarity of its employment; as ordinarily employed, it 
is without meaning ; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, 
it can be dropped; occasionally very defeats its purpose, 
weakening rather than intensifying the meaning. Thus 
"a very perfect extraction" is not as complete as "a per- 
fect extraction;" the first suggests 97%, the second 100%. 



168 STANDARDIZATION OF ENGLISH 

Other examples may be quoted : 

"A most ideal product." 

**A quite perfect separation." 

*'A rather unique process." 

In each case the adverb weakens the adjective. Things 
that are ideal, perfect, or unique, permit of no qualifica- 
tion. They are liors concours. 



GENERAL INDEX 

Page. 

Abbreviations 20, 103 

Accuracy 25, 88 

Approximation 27 

Ambiguity ..11, 81, 84 

Antecedent 73 

Australian terms 17, 40, 41 

Capitals 101, 102 

Chemical symbols 20, 21, 22 

Ciphers 26 

Colloquial terms 16, 49, 85 

Comma 26 

Conjunctions 76, 91 

Currency 23 

Decimal point 26, 28 

Defining clauses 75 

Definite article 65 

Dimensions 24, 27 

Education 29, 51 

Euphony 82 

Exaggeration 53 

Excessive hyphenation 38 

Florid descriptions 31 

Foot-notes 101 

Foreign words 103 

Geological Survey 63, 121 

Generalizations 108 

Gerund 34, 35 

Greek and Latin 29 

Headings 108 

Hyphens 33 

Indefinite pronoun 71 

Italics 103, 105 



170 GENERAL INDEX 

Page 

Latinity 99, 116 

Local terms 19, 40, 41 

Lucidity 39, 84 

Manuscript 101 

Modesty 55, 72 

Numbers 25, 58 

Numerals 23 

Participle 34, 35 

Period 22 

Plural 20, 56, 94, 104 

Possessive 93 

Prepositions 95 

Preposition verbs 65, 104 

Pronouns 58, 59, 72, 73 

Punctuation 22, 26, 77, 96 

Quotation marks 98 

Relative pronouns 73, 91 

Restrictive clause 73, 83 

Shall and will 92 

Split infinitive 65 

Stenographer, use of 14 

Style 8, 13, 110 

Subjunctive 92 

Taste 62, 72 

Tautology 69 

Terminations 103 

Thermometrical signs 21,23 

Titles 62 

Transfer of thought 8 

Usage 28, 65 

Vulgarisms 16, 44, 46, 105, 118 

Weights and measures 22, 23 



INDEX TO WORDS 



Page. 

About 56 

Adit 43 

Amalgamating 36 

Approximate 59 

Balance 99 

Barrel 23 

Beaume 23 

Bushel 23 

Calcareous 100 

Camp 99 

Carbonaceous 98 

Carboniferous 98 

Cent 23 

Centavo 21, 23 

Centigrade 23 

Centimetre 23 

Chute 43 

Company 24 

Concentrate 57 

Consistence 59 

Contemplate 91 

Country rock 41 

Cubic centimetre 20 

Delimit 103 

Deposit 33 

Dip 46 

District 99 

Doctor 62 

Down-cast 37 

Drift 42, 43 

Drive 42, 87 

Dynamic 117 

Estate 91 

Evolution 117 

Except 58 

Exploitation 90 

Exploration 90 

Extensive 86 

Fahrenheit 23 

Farther 103 

Fathom 23 



Page. 

Feet 22 

Field 99 

Florin 23 

Flue-dust 36 

Franc 23 

Furnace 35 

Gallon 23 

Gallows frame 17, 19 

Grain 23 

Gram 23 

Grinding-plate 35 

Hade 46 

Head-frame 18 

High-grade 50 

Horse-power 23 

Inaugurate 86 

Inches 22 

Install 86 

Kilogram 21, 23 

Kilometre 23 

Latter 70 

Lead 40 

Leaser 17, 19 

Ledge 17, 19, 40 

Lessee 18, 46 

Locate 44, 45 

Location 44 

Lode 40 

Metasomatic 100, 118 

Metre 23 

Milligram 23 

Millimetre 23 

Milling 36 

Mineral 42 

Mineralization 42 

Mineralized 42 

Minute 22 

Mucker 89 

Occur 70 

One 71 



172 



INDEX TO WORDS 



Page. 

Ore 18, 33, 41 

Ore-bin 34 

Orebody 33 

Ore-shoot 33, 43 

Ounce 20 

Paddock 17, 19 

Part 45, 46, 58 

Partially 58, 103 

Partly 58, 103 

Payable 70 

Penny 23 

Per cent 22, 58, 86 

Permanent 51, 85 

Persistent 51, 85 

Peso 21 

Pitch 46 

Poppet-heads 18 

Portion 45, 58 

Pound 20 

Practicable 82 

Preventive 103 

Profitable 70 

Professor 62 

Prosecute 85, 91 

Raise 42 

Rather 55 

Reagent 103 

Reaumur 23 

Reef 17, 19, 40 

Region 98, 99 

Reinforce 103 

Re-locate 37 

Remainder 99 

Report 66, 67 

Rock 18, 19, 41, 42 



Page. 

Sand 56, 57 

Second 22 

Section 45, 87 

Series 59 

Shall 92 

Shilling 23 

Shoot 43 

Silicious 100 

Slag-pot 35 

Slime 46, 56 

Somewhat 54 

Stamp-mill 34 

Strata 100 

Strike 49, 104 

Sulphurets 17, 19, 41 

Supposititious 103 

Tailing 47, 56 

Tank 40 

That 74, 75, 94 

Tunnel 43 

Unique 54 

Upward 104 

Value 47, 48, 88 

Vat 35, 40 

Vein-stone 41 

Very 52, 53 

Which 73, 94 

Who 73, 93 

Will 92 

Winze 43 

Yard 23 

Zinc-box 35 



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